New Pig Iron Demonstration Plant Now Running in Brazil

Mining Weekly reported Vale (NYSE:VALE,SAO:VALE5) it has started a demonstration plant to test and further develop technology which can produce pig iron.

The market news is quoted as saying,

The tecnored technology uses cold pellets, or lumps, composed of fine particles of iron ore and a reducing agent (such as different types of coal), each about 50 mm across. When heated in a furnace (not a blast furnace) the reducing agent removes the oxygen from the iron ore, which is consequently transformed into pig iron. The whole process takes a mere 30 minutes – a coke-fueled blast furnace can take up to eight hours to do the same thing.

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