dri a question of scale, page-8

Hi Lekki,

An interesting question from you as always. The company has said that the ARI process can (theoretically?) handle 15 tonne of mill scale per tonne of pickle. Therefore theoretically the NIRP with 13000 tonne of pickle matches the Midrex Nippon steel capacity of 190,000tpa ARI.

Currently the company indicates the upgraded pilot plant will produce 25,000 tonne pa of ARI. Therefore on straight maths the new metalizer would need to be eight times larger than the one currently at the pilot plant to match the Midrex Nippon plant. That would seem doable. The 500,000 tonne plant would be a 20 times scale up or two 10 times scale ups. More of a stretch and still doable I think.

I think they were discussing handling 50 tonne per day of spent pickle in Australia which would theoretically process 270,000 tpa of mill scale so the pickle side of the process appears OK. So assuming the scale up has no issues it will come down to cost and efficiency of the metalizer as Tewks discussed.

(Check the maths for errors as always as I'm doing this quickly)

Cheers

Seik