2018 - Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit & Exhibition
4-7 November 2018, Rio Othon Palace, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
| Investigation of Microwave Route for Beneficiation of Low-grade Iron Ore Nikhil Dhawan1; Veeranjaneyulu Rayapudi2; 1IIT-ROORKEE, roorkee, India; 2IIT-ROORKEE, ROORKEE, India; PAPER: 332/Mineral/Regular (Oral) SCHEDULED: 14:50/Tue./Pontal (50/2nd) ABSTRACT: India's 2030 vision requires a huge amount of quality iron ore, and the utilization of low-grade iron ores such as banded iron ores will play an important role to achieve the same. The absence of alumina impurities in the Banded Hematite Jasper (BHJ) ore provides it an edge over other low-grade iron ores, and has a promising potential as feed material in a blast furnace. The conventional beneficiation techniques such as magnetic separation, spiral concentration, and washing are ineffective in producing suitable feed (Fe~60%) for the blast furnace. It is found that microwave exposure provides significant enrichment to the low-grade iron ore and can be used as a pretreatment step in the beneficiation of similar low-grade iron ores. The above study reveals that hematite and magnetite are strongly susceptible to microwave exposure, which enhances separation of iron values from impurities. The pretreatment process for beneficiation includes only microwave exposure, and no chemical additive and may prove economical and industrially feasible. Under optimal conditions, an iron-enriched concentrate with 61%Fe, 85% Fe recovery at 50% yield can be achieved from feed ~37 % Fe, whereas the carbothermal reduction in the microwave reactor yields ~68% Fe at 95% iron recovery under optimal conditions. References: [1] Rath, S., Dhawan N., Rao, D. S., Das, B., Mishra, B.K., 2016, Beneficiation studies of a difficult to treat iron ore using conventional and microwave roasting, Powder Technology, 301, 1016-1024. |
