Micromechanical and multi-scale modeling of manganese containing slag comminution in the design of energy efficient secondary raw material beneficiation processes

Abstract Efficient separation of valuable metals from various slags is of great interest for the industry to effectively utilize valuable raw materials. Present work focuses on modeling the deformation and damage behavior of manganese containing slag materials at the microstructural level, which dictates the macroscopic material behavior and allows one to investigate possibilities to perform metal separation after comminution of the slags. The model includes finite element micromechanical description of the material behavior and slag microstructure. Computational micromodels are constructed based on direct input characterization data and statistically representative synthetic models. The damage model treats brittleness and ductility of the material together with phase specific material behavior, all relevant to comminution of the slag. Finally, a simplified jaw crusher simulation accounts for freeing materials, assisting the evaluation of empirical random breakage, all together with a microstructural particle study which is analyzed against micromechanical modeling. Crystal plasticity level simulations of surface deformation and hardening in jaw crusher are presented to couple macroscale crushing events with microscale deformation of wear parts. The work overall presents a workflow and proposes a methodology how digitalization and multi-scale material modeling can contribute to the development of efficient comminution means for hard to process secondary raw materials.