Research & Development

Economic Mineral Beneficiation

The research in this area is aimed at identifying ways to maximise use of raw materials from captive sources and is focussed on three subjects:

8% Ash coal maintaining yield

Here the objective is to develop a cost-effective beneficiation route for producing clean coal with 8% ash, maintaining current yield from the captive collieries. A dense medium cyclone that can use coarse coal (2 mm and over) to produce 12% ash clean coal has been designed and tested on a laboratory scale in preparation of a plant test. A similar cyclone designed for beneficiating fines from 0.25 to 2 mm to produce 10% ash clean coal will be tested directly on the plant.

Complete beneficiation of iron ore

ies are being developed and up-scaled to beneficiate high-alumina fractions and slimes with the aim to reduce alumina content to less than 1.5%. Efforts are also being made to commercially utilise the rejects.

Technology for cost-effective use of newly acquired raw material sources

A direct reduction method was developed for zinc bearing iron ore that ensures that zinc is retained in the DRI to avoid problems associated with vaporisation of zinc. The DRI thus produced can be processed in electric arc furnaces, a well established route for steel production from scrap with high zinc content. A feasibility study was successfully carried out.