POF client Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has recently signed a landmark collaboration agreement with Chinese company Beijing MCC Equipment Research and Design Corporation Ltd (MCCE) for the mineral resources flagship dry slag granulation (DSG) technology.
The new agreement and co-operation mark a heightened level of collaboration and interest in CSIRO technologies and expertise from China, which has the largest mining and mineral processing industry in the world.
Dry slag granulation (DSG) technology
The CSIRO dry slag granulation process is fitted to blast furnaces and includes a spinning disc and granulation chamber that separates molten slag into droplets under centrifugal forces. It uses air to quench and solidify the droplets, and extracts a granulated slag product as well as heated air.
The ‘glassy’ slag product is ideal for cement manufacture, and has significantly lower associated greenhouse gas emissions than cement produced by conventional methods. The recovered heat can then be used for drying, pre-heating or steam generation. The process saves water and eliminates underground water pollution that can be associated with alternative wet granulation processes.
The process is the subject of a number of granted and pending patent applications filed in a number of jurisdictions, including China, the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Environmentally friendly DSG agreement
According to CSIRO’s Director of the Mineral Resources Flagship, Jonathan Law, the agreement for DSG industrial-scale demonstration is a landmark collaboration for Australia-China research and for environmentally-friendly metal production.
‘Our collaboration is an exciting step towards the uptake of an innovation with real prospects of transforming the productivity and environmental performance of global iron smelting,’ Mr Law said. ‘The benefits from wide uptake of DSG technology on blast furnaces will be profound in helping the global industry to reduce water and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions while sustaining metal production.’
The agreement is the culmination of more than a decade of DSG technology development by CSIRO and industry partners including Arrium Ltd and BlueScope Ltd. Under the agreement, MCCE is to scale-up and demonstrate the technology at industrial scale and, upon success, commercialise it in China and then potentially worldwide.
