This invention relates to a method and apparatus for gasifying or liquifying coal. In particular, the method comprises reacting a coal with a molten aluminum or aluminum alloy bath. The apparatus includes a reaction vessel for carrying out the reaction, as well as other equipment necessary for capturing and removing the reaction products. Further, the process can be used to cogenerate electricity using the excess heat generated by the process.

This invention relates to a method and apparatus for gasifying or liquifying coal. In particular, the method comprises reacting a coal with a molten aluminum or aluminum alloy bath. The apparatus includes a reaction vessel for carrying out the reaction, as well as other equipment necessary for capturing and removing the reaction products. Further, the process can be used to cogenerate electricity using the excess heat generated by the process.

Methods and systems are described for the synthesis of graphene, synthetic graphite, and other carbon allotropes. Thus, the method describes a method to synthesize carbon nanostructures and synthetic graphite by using unrecyclable materials, such as plastic wastes (i.e., Polypropylene, Styrene, Polyethylene, Poly Vinyl Chloride, PVDF, tires, etc.), Liquid wastes (i.e. tank bottoms, PVDF liquid foams, contaminated oils, etc.) (unrecyclable carbons) regardless of its state, cleanliness, or whether it is contaminated with other byproducts.

A method for refining sulfidic copper concentrate includes feeding sulfidic copper concentrate and oxygen-bearing reaction gas and slag forming material into a reaction shaft of a suspension smelting furnace, collecting slag and blister copper in a settler of the suspension smelting furnace to form a blister layer containing blister copper and a slag layer, and discharging slag and blister copper separately from the settler of the suspension smelting furnace, so that slag is fed into an electric furnace. The method further includes feeding a part of the sulfidic copper concentrate into the electric furnace.

The present method can be used for converting nickel-containing copper sulphide materials. A method for continuously converting nickel-containing copper sulphide materials into blister copper, waste slag and a copper-nickel alloy includes smelting the materials together with SiO2 and CaO-containing fluxes and coal in a Vanyukov converting furnace to produce blister copper, gases with a high concentration of SO2, and slag with an SiO2/CaO concentration ratio of from 3:1 to 1:1, in which the sum of the iron, nickel and cobalt concentrations is not more than 30 wt %, at a specific oxygen consumption in the range of 150-240 nm3 per ton of dry sulphide material for conversion, and depleting the slag in a separate unit, namely a Vanyukov reduction furnace, using a mixture of an oxygen-containing gas and a hydrocarbon fuel at an oxygen consumption coefficient () in a range of from 0.5 to 0.9, together with coal, to produce waste slag and a copper-nickel alloy. The technical result is the production of blister copper, waste slag and a copper-nickel alloy using a continuous method, while separating the processes of conversion and reduction into separate units, namely two single-zone Vanyukov furnaces.

Provided is a method for recovering a valuable metal from a material including waste lithium ion batteries or the like. The method comprises: a preparation step for preparing a material including at least Li, Al, and a valuable metal; a reduction and melting step for carrying out a reduction and melting process on the material to obtain a reduced product including a slag and an alloy containing a valuable metal; and a slag separation step for separating the slag from the reduced product to recover the alloy. In the preparation step and/or the reduction and melting step, a flux containing Ca is added. In the reduction and melting step, the reduction and melting process is performed such that the mass ratio of aluminum oxide/(aluminum oxide+calcium oxide+lithium oxide), in the generated slag, is set to 0.5-0.65, and the slag heating temperature is set to 1400-1600? ? C.

The present invention concerns a process for the recovery of metals and of heat from spent rechargeable batteries, in particular from spent Li-ion batteries containing relatively low amounts of cobalt. It has in particular been found that such cobalt-depleted Li-ion batteries can be processed on a copper smelter by: feeding a useful charge and slag formers to the smelter; adding heating and reducing agents; whereby at least part of the heating and/or reducing agents is replaced by Li-ion batteries containing one or more of metallic Fe, metallic Al, and carbon. Using spent LFP or LMO batteries as a feed on the Cu smelter, the production rate of Cu blister is increased, while the energy consumption from fossil sources is decreased.

An operation method of a copper-smelting furnace is characterized by including supplying an Fe metal source into a copper-smelting furnace together with a feeding material including copper concentrate and a flux, the copper concentrate including Al, the Fe metal source including an Fe metal of 40 mass % to 100 mass %.

A method is disclosed for extracting metals from concentrated sulphurated minerals containing metals by direct reduction with regeneration and recycling of the reducing agent, iron, and of the flux, sodium carbonate. It is a combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes which differ from the conventional processes. They do not require previous toasting of the concentrated sulphurated minerals and are technically and economically more advantageous than the presently used processes, since they directly reduce to zero the positive oxidation state of the metal, using a single reactor for extracting the metal, regenerating and recycling the metallurgical feed materials in complementary processes, the kinetics of the chemical reactions being characterised by high speed, without generating any slags or pollutant gases. The metals can be extracted at a reduced cost and in an environmentally sustainable manner

Provided is a method by which it is possible to collect valuable metals from raw material including waste lithium-ion batteries or the like. The present invention is a method which includes: a step for preparing raw material including at least Li, Al, and the valuable metals; a step for obtaining a reduction that includes slag and an alloy containing the valuable metals by subjecting the raw material to a reduction melting treatment; and a slag separation step for collecting the alloy by separating out the slag from the reduction, wherein, in a step for adding a flux containing calcium (Ca) to the raw material and performing reduction and melting thereof, the reduction melting treatment is performed such that the liquidus line temperature of ternary Al.sub.2O.sub.3Li.sub.2OCaO slag in a phase diagram is greater than the liquidus line temperature of a ternary CuNiCo alloy in a phase diagram.