summary of austpacs technologies

G'dday

I had an email from some mates and fellow APG followers who wanted to sort out what the hell was the Spent Pickling Liquor APG was referring to and how DRI fitted in the whole Picture. I put together a description for them and they have pushed me to post it on HC for any new chums or, like them, anyone who hasn't kept up with APG's progress and needs a refresher course. Below is an edited version which only looks at the three main technologies and doesn’t cover WIM 150 or China Gold. I also wont be too pedantic by trying to be too exact.

You can look at Austpac as having three separate processes that can be mixed and matched;

1. The ERMS process concentrates and then roasts Illmenite to prepare it to be susceptible to acid leaching. After their magnetic cleanup and roasting the Illmenite is (as an example) 60% TiO2 and 40% Iron Oxide. The leaching step uses Hydrchloric Acid (HCl) to rip out the iron and produce almost pure 97% TiO2 (Synthetic Rutile or Syn Rutile). The Syn Rutile remains as a solid and is seperated for sale. Also as waste from the leaching step you get the Iron from the Illmenite and the Chloride from the spent acid as an Iron Chloride solution (or lets call it Spent Leaching Liquor).

2. EARS converts the Iron Chloride from the leaching back to Hydrochloric Acid and Iron Oxide (also known as rust but we might as well call it synthetic Iron Ore). The Iron Chloride solution is the same as the spent pickle liquor (SPL) Austpac has referred to, except the SPL comes from pickling steel at Steel works so it's called Spent Pickle Liquor.


3. DRI takes the Syn Iron Ore and reduces it to Iron (The oxygen goes into CO2 from burning with coal to directly reduce the Iron Oxide into Iron i.e DRI; Directly Reduced Iron)


You can then use the three processes together in various processes.

1. 97% SYN RUTILE and DRI Production.
This puts ERMS plus EARS plus DRI together and produces Syn Rutile plus Iron (plus fizzy water). This will be used for the new 60000 tonne plant and is what most likely will go into Corridor sands.

2. Acid recycle and Iron recovery for Steel works.
This is EARS plus DRI and is the process that Multiserve is looking to introduce to Steel Works that do a lot of pickling. They can add a lot of extra rust from around the steel works to generate extra Iron and regenerate pickling liquor (Hydrochloric acid). In this case the EARS doesn't use Spent Leaching Liquor but Spent Pickling Liquor, no real difference except it comes from pickling rather than leaching. EARS/DRI may also be used in recycling Galvanising waste solutions (and would that be called SGL?). They estimate a plant doing 50 tonnes of pickle a day would cost $6 million to build and make $11,000 profit (EBITA) in a year. (not looking at my notes but I think that's right but may not include the DRI profit, can't remember).

3. DRI of Iron Ore Fines.
DRI can be used stand alone upgrading Iron Ore to Iron wherever there is a convenient location. E.g. The Pilbara etc.

Hope that helps any new chums and I'm sure others will add tid bits and corrections as needed

Cheers

Seik