Today, as the world increasingly focuses on critical minerals, most attention is usually directed toward new deposits. However, the future of the industry lies not only in extraction, but also in recovering existing resources and returning them to the production chain.
Ilyos Bozorov, an employee of TMK, together with co-authors, has developed a technology for the selective extraction of high-purity cobalt oxide from spent WC–Co cutting tools — tungsten carbide–cobalt.
The results of the research were published in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, a prestigious international scientific journal ranked Q1 in the Scopus database and published on the Springer Nature platform.
As part of the research:
- cobalt recovery increased from 80% to 97.3%;
- cobalt oxide (Co₃O₄) with a purity of 97.6% was obtained;
- the technology successfully passed pilot-scale testing at TMK;
- the recovered cobalt was returned to the production process for manufacturing WC–Co products.
TMK will continue developing sustainable technological solutions for the metals of the future.
