Ann: Share Purchase Plan Shortfall Placement Agreement, page-11

Improved Hard Process” (IHP) installation, Fort Meade, Florida. David Blake of JDC presented current progress in the ongoing development of the IHP, which has now been piloted and tried for several decades. The process uses petcoke (cheap coke made from oil refinery residue) to produce highly concentrated phosphoric acid from normal or low-grade phosphate rock. Rock and petcoke are mixed and heated in a rotary ported kiln (specific kiln with ports to blow in liquid or gaseous fuels, air, etc.) which leads to local reduction and volatilisation of elemental phosphorus. This oxidises in the gas phase above the bed, releasing energy which returns to the process, and yielding P2O5 which is absorbed in a hydrating tower to give phosphoric acid. This is different from a phosphorus furnace process, such as Thermphos operated until 2012 in the Netherlands, where elemental phosphorus is produced (not re-oxidised), so requiring high electrical energy input. Elemental phosphorus (white phosphorus) has high-value applications in the chemicals industry, see SCOPE Newsletter n°123. The phosphoric acid from the IHP is concentrated and relatively pure, without the typical sulphates, aluminium, iron, magnesium and calcium contents of Merchant Grade Acid, but does contain fluoride and volatile heavy metals. The remaining calcium silicate phase from the IHP can be used as agglomerate for road construction, asphalt filler or in concrete. After solving problems with bed melting (by silica addition) and dust formation, JDC Phosphate now announces that it is modifying the IHP into two stages: a first kiln calcining the rock and driving out much of the cadmium, lead, zinc, and arsenic; and a second kiln performing the actual phosphate reduction/oxidation followed by hydration and absorption. This should leave fluoride as the only major contaminant in the phosphoric acid produced. JDC’s current kiln facility has an annual capacity of 10 000 metric tonnes P2O5/year. They are planning to build a scaled-down two-kiln pilot to demonstrate and optimise operation in continuous mode and to test different phosphate rock types as inputs.

http://phosphorusplatform.eu/scope-in-print/news/1472-enews11