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Steel is not elemental iron but rather a group of iron-based alloys containing many elements, especially chromium, nickel, and molybdenum. Steel recycling is expected to promote efficient resource use. However, open-loop recycling of steel could result in quality loss of nickel and molybdenum and/or material loss of chromium. Knowledge about alloying element substance flow is needed to avoid such losses. Material flow analyses (MFAs) indicate the importance of steel recycling to recovery of alloying elements. Flows of nickel, chromium, and molybdenum are interconnected, but MFAs have paid little attention to the interconnected flow of materials/substances in supply chains. This study combined a waste input-output material flow model and physical unit input-output analysis to perform a simultaneous MFA for nickel, chromium, and molybdenum in the Japanese economy in 2000. Results indicated the importance of recovery of these elements in recycling policies for end-of-life (EoL) vehicles and constructions. Improvement in EoL sorting technologies and implementation of designs for recycling/disassembly at the manufacturing phase are needed. Possible solutions include development of sorting processes for steel scrap and introduction of easier methods for identifying the composition of secondary resources. Recovery of steel scrap with a high alloy content will reduce primary inputs of alloying elements and contribute to more efficient resource use.

This study presents the results of chemical thermodynamic analysis on the distribution of elements in the smelting process of metallic materials to examine the controllability of impurities in the pyrometallurgical technique. The results of the present work can give an answer against the frequently given question; "Which impurity element can be removable in metallurgical process?" or "How far can the impurity level be controlled?". The proposed method was applied to estimate the distribution of 29 elements for a copper converter and 26 elements for a steel-making process and shows the distribution tendency of elements among the gas, slag, and metal phases as well as clarifying which metals can be recovered or removed from secondary resources in metallurgical processes. The effects of temperature, oxygen partial pressure, and slag composition on the distribution ratio of elements were also evaluated, and the removal limit or controllability of impurity in these two processes was presented. This study results in thermodynamic features of various elements in the pyrometallurgical process and also shows, even by varying process parameters such as temperature and oxygen partial pressure, no drastic improvement of removal efficiency should be expected, except for lead and tin in copper.

In previous studies on the physical chemistry of pyrometallurgical processing of aluminum scrap, only a limited number of thermodynamic parameters, such as the Gibbs free energy change of impurity reactions and the variation of activity of an impurity in molten aluminum, were taken into account. In contrast, in this study we thermodynamically evaluated the quantitative removal limit of impurities during the remelting of aluminum scrap; all relevant parameters, such as the total pressure, the activity coefficient of the target impurity, the temperature, the oxygen partial pressure, and the activity coefficient of oxidation product, were considered. For 45 elements that usually occur in aluminum products, the distribution ratios among the metal, slag, and gas phases in the aluminum remelting process were obtained. Our results show that, except for elements such as Mg and Zn, most of the impurities occurred as troublesome tramp elements that are difficult to remove, and our results also indicate that the extent to which the process parameters such as oxygen partial pressure, temperature, and flux composition can be changed in aluminum production is quite limited compared to that for iron and copper production, owing to aluminum's relatively low melting point and strong affinity for oxygen. Therefore, the control of impurities in the disassembly process and the quality of scrap play important roles in suppressing contamination in aluminum recycling.