Start: Willkommen

Christian Doppler Laboratory

Name: CDL Special Metals
Address: 18 Franz Josef-Straße, Leoben, Steiermark, 8700, AT
Telephone: +43 3842 402 5254

for selective recovery of minor metals using innovative process concepts

Head:

Priv.-Doz. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.mont. Stefan Steinlechner

The central goal of the CD Laboratory is the development of new raw material sources of special metals, which are primarily used in the high-tech industry. The research focuses on the little-studied industrial material flows of the metallurgical industry, such as intermediates, by-products, and residual materials. The development of new sources together with its extraction strategy improves the security of supply in Europe on the one hand, and the avoidance of primary mining also makes an important contribution to the conservation of resources.
For this purpose, methods for determining the distribution of metals in the phases and compounds that occur are developed and applied, and the possibilities of influencing the behaviour in hydro- and pyrometallurgical processes is investigated. The low concentration of target metals compared to the dominant matrix represents a major challenge and implies several possible influencing factors on the behaviour of the metal in the metallurgical extraction steps.

RESEARCH

The laboratory is focused on the development of methods to determine the behaviour of special metals in metallurgical process steps. The findings are applied to influence and manipulate those specific metals to achieve higher extraction performances.

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ALGORITHMS

The Christian Doppler Laboratory is engaged in the development and implementation of algorithms for the research of recovery methods for special metals. This is intended to achieve a deeper understanding of thermodynamic and kinetic test and simulation results by evaluating multidimensional input and output variables.

IN-SITU-OBSERVATION OF PHASE TRANSITIONS

A new innovative method which is used in the field of simulation of metallurgical high-temperature processes is the insitu observation with a special heating device for scanning electron microscope. This allows the analysis in realtime of phase-formation, transformation, and the distribution of metals in certain compounds. This gives us advanced possibilities in the field of metallurgical research and offers unique insights into ongoing processes.

Start: Forschung