Effect of mineralogy on the low temperature electrolysis of iron ore

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Iron has been a vital component of mankind's history throughout the ages, exemplified with the Iron Age being the third epoch of the three-age system (stone and bronze being the other two). During the Industrial Revolution, the importance of iron increased dramatically. Currently, up to 98% of the mined iron is used as the primary input in steel industry to make steel, as steel is required by many industries such as: construction and heavy industries, shipbuilding, machinery and motor vehicle manufacturing, railway construction, bridge building and engineering applications. The production of iron from its ores is through a series of mineral processing steps, including mineralogical analyses, followed by reduction to iron (and then steel production). The reduction process most commonly utilises a blast furnace, which has some significant environmental drawbacks. A report by the European Union states that currently there are no technologically feasible and economically reasonable alternatives to completely replace coking coal in the production of steel from iron ore. Recently, however, the advancement of low temperature alkaline electrolysis has introduced an environmentally-friendly alternative. This technology does not work to the same levels of efficiency for all iron ore concentrates; as such, this project will investigate the impact of mineralogy on the low-temperature alkaline electrolysis process, and aims at optimisation for Canadian iron deposits.