Matmor

A week old but an interesting article related to Niti Aayo and the Steel industry in India (apologies if it has been posted prior).

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/ec...bilitycheap-iron-ore-withinmonth_8565741.html

"What policy steps we need to take to ensure that iron ore is plentifully and cheaply available is something which we are working on and there could be various formulations to that,” an official privy to the development said. “We are examining those and hopefully in a month or so we would be able to say that these are recommendations,” the official said, adding that “Niti Aayog has been mandated to examine that. They will examine that and come and give us the suggestions”. As a basic principle “…prices of raw material resources should be cheap because that gives us (Steel Ministry) a competitive advantage because we are involved in many schemes,” the official said. NMDC is the country’s single-largest iron ore producer.

From ECT website: The advantages of the MATMOR Process over traditional blast furnace iron making are:

• Replacement of expensive metallurgical coal with cheap, abundant lignite
• The opportunity to replace expensive high grade Iron Ore (60%+Fe) with cheaper, low grade Iron Ore
• Able to recover iron from millscale and other waste materials
• Process requires significantly less heat / energy
• Capital cost less than traditional blast furnaces for equivalent production capacity
• Recirculation of waste gases minimises emissions
• Lignite, as a reductant, is up to 1000 times more chemically reactive than the black coal currently used in traditional primary iron production.

The advantages over alternate Iron making processes are:

• MATMOR is the only process we are aware of that can use lignite
• Economic at smaller scale
• Lower emissions
• Able to recover iron from waste streams such as millscale and nickel tailings