Prices... Syn rutile - 470 USD/t TiO2 http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/titanium/timinmcs07.pdf
DRI - 250 USD/t 94% Fe http://www.hbia.org/pdf/Vienna/02-WorldMarketforSRM.pdf
Using APG's ERMS/EAR/DRI process chain, Gross income = 660USD/t TiO2
At 257 USD gross income per tonne CO2 produced (JW figure for APG), CO2 generated = 2.57 tCO2/t TiO2 produced
By comparison, under the same assumptions, the Becher process figure becomes.. CO2 generated = 3.41 tCO2/t TiO2
The APG process uses 75% less energy than the Becher process to produce every tonne of TiO2
PLUS (!!!) ...it generates 0.7t DRI for every tonne TiO2 with that energy.
I seem to remember MT saying that the energy used to include DRI at the end of the process was only an additional 10%. If that is the case (leaving TiO2 aside), the CO2 generation for DRI alone is about 0.5 tCO2 per tonne DRI.
Compare this to the CO2 generated by the FINMET process (used by BHP at the Boodarie plant). According to a FINMET presentation in SA in 2003, CO2 generated by this process was about 1.0 tCO2/t DRI product. This is double my estimate for the incremental energy used for APG's DRI! Note that the energy cost constitutes about 30% of production costs for DRI, so this can reduce DRI production costs by 15%.
BHP may be interested in Corridor Sands in the short term, but that is just the start. I wonder if Chip reads HC??
Feel free to pull my figures apart! It is tricky sourcing public domain data.
APG Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held