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Iron Ore - General Commentary
- Thread starter Miner
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Aaah, so that's why Twiggy is sinking money into hydrogen manufacturing.
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Yes
do not worry , very cent of it plus more will be paid back by your taxes....that is sure bet ...
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Lithium was meant to save the world and the pants fell off the market, now they're talking down iron, what's next?Yes
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They are not talking down iron, they are talking down Australian iron ..
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From Emissions to Innovation
@qldfrog, the iron industry is here to stay as it shapes our world, and everyone is aware that its greenhouse gas emissions weigh heavily at the moment. However, instead of the article "talking up" a pessimistic view as @TimeISmoney said, I would have rather the article focus more on the potential for an "emissions to innovation" scenario.
Imagine technologies that would shrink emissions by developing new products from captured CO2 (currently done on a small scale). With gifted opportunities, the industry can evolve and innovate by embracing carbon capture at "scale", reducing the impact on the environment while creating fresh revenue streams. A win-win scenario.
Skate.
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maybe , but i see more taxation scams as various Governments seek to covertly raise extra revenue so they can waste it building a bigger government
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As long as there is a cost and some countries less gullible about the CO2 causing global warming scam (instead of increasing agricultural output), this just means decreasing competitiveness
and as we start from a lower grade, we are just heading into a wall.
But it seems the nickel lesson has not been learnt ...
For the time being, there is a shortage of available industrial CO2 as experienced by all Australians in their carbonated drink aisles in the supermarket ..
We have at least one area where we could use recycled CO2....
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Iron ore is here to stay, definitively, the question is whether we want australia to be part of it, or not ,and try actively shutting it down .which is happening now.
My first iron mine visit as a kid was in Austria (no typo).
I have never heard of Austrian mining since, at least in the last few decades.....
My first iron mine visit as a kid was in Austria (no typo).
I have never heard of Austrian mining since, at least in the last few decades.....
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FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
Last edited:
IFocus
You are arguing with a Galah
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FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
Back in the day they used to pelletize ore in WA as well I remember the dust cloud that used to come out of the plant at Parker Point Dampier.
It's not hard to do but is an added cost.
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yes GRR has had some moments it the sunshine for me ( and is one of the top-up orders i have in the market )FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
but sometimes having the nerve to buy cheap pays off
Value Collector
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Fortescue‘s Iron Bridge mine produces magnetite ore using the same principle I am unsure if they press into pellets or just sell loose concentrate but it’s made in the same process, they transport the slurry quite a long distance.FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
pelletising is a great option if you have a very large deposit of really low grade Ore, the future of all the pilbara miners lies in pelletising eventually. The high grade ores that they currently mine represent about 5% of the Iron Ore that’s going to be available for mining, eventually once that direct shipping Ore is gone they will have to begin mining lower grade ores and upgrading them into pellets.
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That's where my thought's going yes. Ultimately it's either upgrade or it'll be game over. Won't happen overnight but at some point it will.
And to help join some dots, one thing Grange have been seriously investigating in the context of the operations in Tasmania is to convert the plant to use hydrogen as the fuel source.
Presumably others, notably Fortescue, are consciously aware of this hence their interest in hydrogen.
Technically that's just burning the hydrogen as a heat source, there's nothing particularly fancy about it, but there's also been investigation into the idea of direct electric pre-heating. So a two state heating process basically. The advantage is in theory at least it should be cheaper if part of the hydrogen step can be skipped.
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not really, there are plenty of iron deposit on earth: one of the most common mineral on earth
if you can not compete on grade/cost..you are out...
And the Austrian mines are out...yet plenty of iron left
I thought it was obvious in the context of my answer
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BHP did the Iron ore briquettes in WA in about pre-2005ish I believe, there was some type of malfunction and part of the process caught on fire, which was the end of that. I could imagine they can fine tune a process like this. (If you go to Port Hedland they,re still all over the ground where they fell off the conveyors)FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
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FWIW it's on a tiny scale compared to WA but the iron ore mine in Tasmania does process its production to pellets. A definitely different approach there which involves mining the ore, crushing on site, magnetic concentration to produce a high iron content slurry, sending it 85km by pipeline to the pellet plant, turning it into pellets then exporting. The ship loading facility being built out to sea right from the pellet plant on the coast.
So turning the ore into a much higher grade product basically. In principle at least, could do much the same WA - stick with trains for transport but pelletize the ore either at the mine or at the port.
My Dad was an Instrument tech at the Dampier pellet plant, back in 1968, I was in first year high school and there was no Karratha or Wickham .
So it really shows how far we can go backwards in one lifetime, doesn't really bode well for the next phase, we are way too focused on political pointscoring and social engineering, to stop the rot IMO.
The situation is more dire than the politicians are letting on and none seem to have any idea how to turn the ship, aside from throwing money at the plebs, importing wage slaves and shackling the workers to bigger and bigger mortgages.
It didn't work well in Argentina, I don't think it will here either.
Hopefully Kev comes back and gets a summit of intelectuals together like he did last time, because that seems like the last time that any politician actually admitted they were lost.
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Sorry Frog, wasn't any intention about your post, it was purely the word Austria,- took me back to the movie Dumb and Dumber which the gif is an excerpt from.
Completely off topic attempt at humour. Maybe the clip clears things up?
Apologies for off topic humour. Have a laugh, life's too short.
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Yep, I have also heard that it might be possible to use very high grade ore pellets in electric arc furnaces with certain modifications, but haven’t looked into it.That's where my thought's going yes. Ultimately it's either upgrade or it'll be game over. Won't happen overnight but at some point it will.
And to help join some dots, one thing Grange have been seriously investigating in the context of the operations in Tasmania is to convert the plant to use hydrogen as the fuel source.
Presumably others, notably Fortescue, are consciously aware of this hence their interest in hydrogen.
Technically that's just burning the hydrogen as a heat source, there's nothing particularly fancy about it, but there's also been investigation into the idea of direct electric pre-heating. So a two state heating process basically. The advantage is in theory at least it should be cheaper if part of the hydrogen step can be skipped.
At some stage in the next 30 years we will have to be cutting coal out of steel production, At that point I think the high grade pellets will be selling at a much larger premium than they do today.
