Vanadium is a heavy metal and is reproductive and developmental toxic for mammals. Therefore, Tata Steel Nederland should prevent vanadium emissions from entering the groundwater. Consequently, a good understanding of blast furnace burden feed material’s microstructural development and phase transformations is required. This thesis aims to investigate how the distribution of vanadium in iron ores changes when these are processed into pellets and how this affects the leaching potential. Therefore, a semi-quantitative approach is applied, using different analytical techniques, including XRD, SEM-EDS, LA-ICP-MS and leaching tests.

The results show that vanadium is initially hosted in the spinel structures of the magnetite iron ores. A secondary melt phase is formed during firing, where the vanadium is partially transferred to from the iron oxides. The amount of vanadium is controlled by the basicity of the pellets and the oxygen fugacity during firing. This melt phase is likely susceptible to vanadium leaching.

In conclusion, this research showed how the distribution of vanadium changed during the pelletization process. Further research is recommended to perform this study on sinter blast furnace feed material, study the influence of the oxygen fugacity in more depth, perform a more extensive leaching study and research how the leaching of vanadium from pellets can be prevented.