National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is all set to break new grounds in iron ore mining.
The country’s largest iron ore miner will shortly be giving India a new technology for commercial extraction of iron ore from banded hematite jasper (BHJ) and banded hematite quartzite (BHQ) rocks, which are naturally mined along with the ore during normal mining operations.
Huge layers of these rocks thus pile up at the mine sites, which now will be put to commercial use.
“We are close to developing the technology — in another six months we should be ready with the technology viability report, which we are preparing with a consultant,” Mr Rana Som, Chairman and Managing Director, told Business Line.
The company, which produces about 30 million tonne of iron ore, plans to set up the first beneficiation plant with a capacity of three lakh tonnes a year at an estimated cost of Rs 100 crore, which will actually demonstrate the commercial viability of the technology.
This forms part of the company’s efforts to optimise iron ore production to meet the anticipated spurt in domestic demand. It has lined up a capital expenditure programme of Rs 2,500 crore to increase the capacity of its ore production to 50 million tonne by 2014, out of which about 85% will be for the domestic steel industry.
BHJ and BHQ rocks contain lesser quantities of iron ore and hence cannot be directly used in steel making. BHJ rocks, for example, contain about 40% iron ore and only if they are purified and enriched to 65% they can be charged in a pellet plant.
“Roughly, 100 kg of BHJ rock can yield 30 kg (30%) of iron ore if enriched to 65% level, which is what our technology is about,” said a senior official of NMDC’s R&D Department, which is actually developing the technology.
Although the company had explored different beneficiation methods, it ultimately zeroed in on spiral separation method to transform the rocks into useable iron ore.
As far as availability of this resource is concerned, the company faces no problems. As of now, some 12-14 million tonne of these two banded rocks are piled up as huge mountains of mineral wealth at its Donamalai mine site.
NMDC’s R&D unit, which operates as a separate profit centre, spent Rs 20 crore last fiscal. Its technology development projects include a pilot plant facility for production of carbon free sponge iron powder from blue dust, another mineral that is naturally mined along with iron ore operations.
It has also established lab scale technology for production of nano iron powder using blue dust in collaboration with Moscow State Institute of Steel and Alloys — the major applications of nano-structured iron powder are in electro-magnetic, automobile, computer, pain, coating, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
Source: The Hindu Business Line
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