Recycling and Utilization of Tungsten

   With the continuous development of tungsten industry, the consumption of its raw materials is increasing and the recoverable resources are becoming less and less. Therefore, the recovery and utilization of tungsten has attracted the attention of governments all over the world. For example, the United States, Russia and other countries have established strategic reserves of it, and Japan established a special tungsten recovery Commission (WR commission) in 1775. In addition, in today's industry, an important indicator to measure the technology, scale and comprehensive competitiveness of a tungsten enterprise is whether the enterprise can recycle secondary tungsten resources environmentally. In addition, compared with its concentrate, the waste has high tungsten content and easy recovery, so recycling has become the focus of the industry.

   At present, the world's tungsten supply mainly consists of two parts, one is the supply of newly produced concentrates, which accounts for about 76% of the total supply, 66% of which enter the final tungsten products, and 10% become the waste in the production process. The other part comes from the recycling of secondary resources of tungsten, that is, the recycling and reuse of solid waste and end consumer waste in tungsten production process, such as scrap cemented carbide, tungsten material, alloy steel, contact material and chemical catalyst, which accounts for about 24%.

   Recovery and Utilization of Tungsten

   With the increasing utilization rate of tungsten secondary resources in various countries, the technology of its resource recovery is also increasing. Common methods include mechanical crushing, nitrate, zinc melting, electrolysis, leaching, reduction, Roasting-Ammonia leaching, and some recovery methods,which are due to environmental pollution and low recovery rate. Gradually eliminated, such as the soda sintering process to produce APT, there are also some new recovery methods, such as the recovery of tungsten from smelting exchange liquor; J. Avidson invented the method of preparing iron and materials from sintered carbide powder, pure WC or crane ore.

  Development of Recycled Tungsten Industry in China

  Recycled tungsten industry in China started relatively late, the recovery and utilization of waste tungsten is relatively low, only 10% of the supply, while the utilization rate of waste in advanced foreign countries is generally more than 30%. The recovery area of tungsten secondary resources in China is relatively narrow, mainly concentrated in cemented carbide and chemical catalysts, the reuse area mainly concentrated in alloys and sodium tungstate, and some recycling methods cause serious secondary environmental pollution. Therefore, China should proceed from the perspective of environmental protection and efficient utilization of resources. We should attach importance to the recovery and utilization of tungsten resources, strengthen the research of low-cost, high-quality, high-grade and high-purity recovery technology, improve the comprehensive recovery of and valuable metal elements, and change the resource advantage into technical advantage.

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