With steel production surpassing projections, the country would, amidst tighter environmental laws, require to find suitable technologies and processes for optimum use of its limited iron ore and energy resources.
Inaugurating the four-day course on ‘processing of iron ores’ (PIO-07) here on Wednesday, the National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML) director, Prof S P Mehrotra, said that the steel industry would face a lot of challenges in the future in terms of use of raw materials while also combating environmental problems.
Around 55 participants representing the country’s steel industry as well as a few foreign delegates would be deliberating on various issues related to future of steel production around the world while tackling environmental issues.
With current “conservative” projections of Indian steel production reaching 80 mt by 2011-12 and 175 mt by 2019-20, the country should move ahead in a planned way.
“To achieve these targets things are not going to be very straightforward or routine as many aspects of steel-making have to be altered very significantly,” said Mehrotra.
At the same time global challenges like climatic changes taking place due to industrial development need to be reversed with urgency while making industrial processes energy-efficient as energy resources were depleting.
Though Indian iron ore reserves are currently projected at 25 billion tonne, it also had an undesirably high alumina and silica content.
Alumina and silica content in Indian iron ore was also much higher as compared with international norm of alumina content being less than 2%, Indian ore contained around 3%-6% alumina. Similarly, while the international alumina to silica content ratio stood at 1, the Indian ratio was found to be as high as 3.
“These are very undesirable levels as even by bringing down the alumina content by 0.5%, the RDI (reduction degradation index) would go up by 6 points leading to lesser consumption of coke in the blast furnace,” added Mehrotra.
Higher alumina content also led to higher slag volumes and lower iron production, thus impacting steel production adversely.
Large quantities of slime and fines also get generated while processing iron ore, most of which remain dumped and unutilised at sites, thus becoming a source of major environmental hazard.
Also, while environmental issues become more intense in the coming years, they need to be tackled by changing practices, the NML director said.
Mineral engineers through newer mineral beneficiation techniques also need to come up with early solutions to save energy consumption by way of finding ways of removal of alumina and silica content from ore at early stages.