Benefits

Green, Sustainable Mining Operations

Collectively, the iron and steel industry is changing at an unprecedented pace. Technological development, automation, and environmental awareness are driving these changes.

The steelmaking industry is a fundamental anchor in the global economy. Over the past decade the industry has made multibillion-dollar investments in upgrading its blast furnace steelmaking furnaces/systems; these modern blast furnaces require a relatively high-grade iron ore feed. As iron ore reserves deplete and diminish in quality, iron mining companies struggle to meet these quality requirements and are therefore being forced into major investments in a chemical-based process known as “flotation” which, while improving quality, also increases operational costs, plant complexity, and unfortunately the need to carefully manage the chemical by-products of their operations.

Developed in-part to eliminate the need for flotation, the magnetic elutriator has proven superior performance in its grade-recovery curves when running in-plant comparison testing, i.e. magnetic elutriation vs flotation. Extensive in-plant testing clearly documents that "Blast furnace Grade Concentrates" are produced in a single pass. As the industry phases in magnetic elutriation, 5R believes iron ore flotation will eventually become obsolete.

Over the long term, the global steelmaking industry is becoming more reliant on cleaner “DRI” steelmaking technology. As the market shifts towards DRI, market demand is increasing for ultra high-grade "DRI-grade" iron ore concentrates. The trend toward DRI steelmaking is as much based on economics as it is based on the simple fact that DRI allows steelmaking from clean fuels such as natural gas. New DRI steel mills are cheaper to build, cheaper to operate, and produce less waste.

To supply the DRI market, existing beneficiation plants realistically need high-grade ore. Most iron ore producers cannot economically produce "DRI-grade" concentrates from low-ores – it can be further said that many ore producers struggle to make "blast furnace grade" ore. In order to achieve significant market share, the DRI industry is relying on the successful commercialization of an innovative breakthrough that will achieve dramatic improvements in efficiency and operational costs in both mining and minerals processing.... the magnetic elutriator offers such an improvement and will serve this emerging, clean market.

Within commercial iron mining operations, which are in every sense heavy-industry & extremely energy intensive, it is well known that small improvements in “separation efficiency” have dramatic effects in the plant’s bottom-line metrics. Mineral processing operations that upgrade to Magnetic ElutriationTM as a green technology investment will target the following potential savings in a fully optimized circuit: an estimated 16 GWhrs electrical energy, 150,000 tons tailing waste reduction, and 250 tons flotation/Amine chemical elimination (annual per/yr basis given typical 5MTPY plant).