Effect of mineralogy on the low temperature electrolysis of iron ore

自古以来，铁器一直是人类历史的重要组成部分，铁器时代是三时代体系的第三个时代（另外两个是石器时代和青铜时代）。在工业革命期间，铁的重要性急剧增加。目前，高达98%的开采铁被用作钢铁工业炼钢的主要投入，因为许多行业都需要钢铁，例如：建筑和重工业、造船、机械和机动车制造、铁路建设、桥梁建设和工程应用。从矿石中生产铁要经过一系列的选矿步骤，包括矿物学分析，然后是还原成铁（然后是钢铁生产）。还原过程最常用的是高炉，这有一些明显的环境缺点。欧盟的一份报告指出，目前还没有技术上可行和经济上合理的替代品来完全取代炼焦煤从铁矿石中生产钢铁。然而，最近，低温碱性电解的进步引入了一种环保的替代品。该技术对所有铁矿石精矿的效率水平不尽相同；因此，该项目将研究矿物学对低温碱性电解过程的影响，并旨在优化加拿大铁矿。

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 IndustrialRevolution, the importance of iron increased dramatically. Currently, up to 98% of the mined iron is used asthe primary input in steel industry to make steel, as steel is required by many industries such as: constructionand heavy industries, shipbuilding, machinery and motor vehicle manufacturing, railway construction, bridgebuilding and engineering applications.The production of iron from its ores is through a series of mineral processing steps, including mineralogicalanalyses, followed by reduction to iron (and then steel production). The reduction process most commonlyutilises a blast furnace, which has some significant environmental drawbacks. A report by the European Unionstates that currently there are no technologically feasible and economically reasonable alternatives tocompletely replace coking coal in the production of steel from iron ore. Recently, however, the advancementof low temperature alkaline electrolysis has introduced an environmentally-friendly alternative. Thistechnology does not work to the same levels of efficiency for all iron ore concentrates; as such, this project willinvestigate the impact of mineralogy on the low-temperature alkaline electrolysis process, and aims atoptimisation for Canadian iron deposits.