Recycling tannery solid wastes as an alternative carbon resource for ironmaking

Tanneries are well-known for generating a huge amount of solid wastes and it is crucial to develop novel environmentally sustainable technologies that would utilise these wastes. This study evaluated the possibility of using tannery solid wastes such as shavings, buffing dust and leather cuttings as a source of carbon in the ironmaking process. Thermal treatment in an argon atmosphere was employed to obtain char from leather wastes. After that, the reduction performance of the prepared chars was demonstrated with iron oxide. About 99.7% of the metal droplets were Fe using all the three chars. Furthermore, life cycle assessment revealed that using leather waste has environmental advantage over using coke. The obtained results suggest that chars produced from these solid wastes could be used to replace the traditional coal/coke for ironmaking and hence reduce the associated costs of coal mining.