value of zinc process, page-23

Sorry to appear obtuse but I just put two and two together. The EARS/DRI system for One Steel takes the pickle from steel works and adds high iron content Baghouse dust to the spent pickle then regenerates Hydrochlric acid and (eventually) Iron. By dosing up the recycled pickle with baghouse dust, lots more iron can be made and profit rises.

The latest announcement blatantly said "The new process will not only be applicable to EAF dust, but also to the waste zinc-rich chloride solutions produced by steel galvanising operations"

So you take the EAF dust and add it to the Zinc/Chloride rich waste galvanising solutions in an EARS/DRZ system and you have roughly the same system as the EARS/DRI except the Zinc is much more valuable. And you get lots of 32% HCl as well.

If a $6 million EARS/DRI plant will make $11 million in the first year then a similar sized EARS/DRZ plant should produce a hell of a lot more in comparison.

ZnCl2 + 2H2O -> 2HCl + ZnO ? (that actually balanced!) Reduce ZNO with a bit of APG magic and you get Direct Reduced Zinc.

Zinc is currently selling at US$1.26/lb or (if I convert correctly) US$2.80 per kg or US$2800 per tonne. I think DRI is about $400/tonne? Maybe less.

Still far too early to understand the real production balances and costs etc so I wont extrapolate back of envelope figures, BUT DRZ is certainly a huge string to the bow and potentially the biggest potential earner. Lots of work to be done yet and that getting the Scaled up plant operating is even more important.

Cheers

Seik