Klondike iron ore. Iron ore klondike. The richest iron ore deposits in West Africa have long attracted the attention of mining and steel groups. Now companies are making new attempts to consolidate their presence in the region.

The richest iron ore deposits in West Africa have long attracted the attention of mining and steel groups. Now the companies are making new attempts to consolidate their presence in the region.

The abundance of iron ore reserves can make West Africa a new world center for the extraction of this raw material. According to Renaissance Capital, the region can produce 100-150 million tons of ore annually. Of course, this could not go unnoticed by the “big three”: Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton were the first to enter tempting territory. In August this year, Xstrata took this path, making an offer to purchase Sphere Minerals, which is exploring several iron ore deposits in Mauritania. It is quite logical, because the proposed in Australia tax on excess profits of mining companies pushes the miners to geographic diversification. Moreover, Brazil may well follow the example of the Australian authorities. And in principle, the mining giants are trying not to miss a single opportunity to expand the reserve base.

However, investing in West Africa carries significant risks. Some countries are struggling to get out of protracted civil wars - political instability is very dangerous for investors, as well as undeveloped legislation in the field of subsoil use. Leading experts speak about it. According to Calum Baker, an analyst at the British consulting company CRU Group, the region will increase iron ore production in the coming years, but the political risks are great - there are examples when governments have taken assets from companies with little or no reason. Analysts at Macquarie Bank agree with him, who wrote in their recent report: “It is safe to say that soon some of the West African raw materials will go to the maritime market. However, many of the iron ore projects, potentially representing more than 10% in the country of implementation, carry the risk of changes in government policies regarding the growth of social security benefits, royalties, and inactivity can lead to unexpected loss of rights. ”

For example, Rio Tinto lost part of the Simandou field in Guinea in 2008. The government of that state revoked the license granted to the company for the northern part of the deposits, since this part had not been developed for about three years. The authorities demanded that the company remove its equipment from there, threatening otherwise to revoke the license for the southern part of the field. It is characteristic that the new government also supported the decision of its predecessor: it was announced that the liquidation of the license was legal, and this is part of the standard procedure - the rights to a field that had not been developed for three years are canceled. Later, the northern part of Simandou was transferred to BSG Resources, 51% of which was acquired by Vale for a payment of $ 2.5 billion. Against this backdrop, Rio Tinto announced a month ago that it would invest an additional $ 170 million in the mine, port and infrastructure on the remainder of Simandou. Rio Tinto instructed design work the Chinese state-owned mining company Aluminum Corp. of China and expressed its readiness for comprehensive cooperation with the Government of Guinea, which expects the early start of production at this field. Such requirements create problems for foreign companies. Many of them acquired rights to iron ore deposits "in reserve", without planning their immediate development. However, this goes against the plans of the governments to start earning revenues from the sale of ore at record prices as quickly as possible.

In addition, the license was taken away from the South African Kumba Iron Ore, which explored the Faleme field in Senegal. In 2007, the government granted the right to develop this field to Arcelor Mittal. Since then, Kumba has fought legal battles with the steel company, demanding compensation for damages, but recently the parties agreed to resolve the problem (on what terms is unknown). At the same time, Faleme is still not being developed - last year Arcelor Mittal stopped work due to a collapse in demand and prices, and is now trying to negotiate the creation of infrastructure with an Indian partner - the state mining company National Mineral Development Corp. (NMDC). According to NMDC estimates, infrastructure costs will account for about 75% of all project investments. In particular, it is necessary to build a railway with a length of 750 km, which will connect Faleme with a port near Dakar.

V total Macquarie names 22 potential iron ore projects in the region and indicates that not all of them will be implemented. The first export shipments of iron ore from West Africa are planned for no earlier than 2011. According to Macquarie analysts, Sierra Leone, where African Minerals and London Mining PLC operate, will be the first to supply ore to the world market, followed by Guinea or Liberia, where Arcelor Mittal has become more active.

Now the Russian Severstal has joined the world's giants. The company owns 61.5% of the Putu project in Liberia. On September 15, Severstal and its partner African Aura (38.5%) announced the signing of an agreement on the development of the field with the government of Liberia. According to Russian estimates, the project will cost $ 2.5 billion. The company has already invested $ 30 million in exploration and feasibility studies and expects to complete the feasibility study by September 2012.

It looks like the political risks in Liberia will gradually decrease. After many years civil war(1989-2003) an interim government was formed in the country, which in January 2006 transferred powers to a popularly elected government, which is actively restoring the country's economy. The state desperately needs foreign investment, and the authorities are very supportive of investors who are ready to restore the mining industry destroyed by the war. So the plans of Arcelor Mittal and Severstal are fully supported by the government. True, the authorities are not inclined to concede in relation to royalties, and the first Arcelor Mittal, which appeared in this country, is forced to show uncharacteristic generosity in social spending. Probably, Severstal is waiting for this as well. But judging by the trends in the global iron ore market, the game is worth the candle.

Iron ore began to be mined by man many centuries ago. Even then, the advantages of using iron became obvious.

Finding mineral formations containing iron is fairly easy, since this element makes up about five percent of the earth's crust. Overall, iron is the fourth most abundant element in nature.

V pure form it is impossible to find it, iron is contained in a certain amount in many types of rocks. The highest iron content is found in iron ore, the extraction of metal from which is the most economically profitable. The amount of iron contained in it depends on its origin, the normal proportion of which in the composition is about 15%.

Chemical composition

The properties of iron ore, its value and characteristics directly depend on its chemical composition. Iron ore can contain varying amounts of iron and other impurities. Depending on this, there are several types of it:

very rich when the iron content in ores exceeds 65%;
rich, the percentage of iron in which ranges from 60% to 65%;
medium, from 45% and above;
poor, in which the percentage of useful elements does not exceed 45%.

The more side impurities in the composition of iron ore, the more energy is needed for its processing, and the less efficient is the production of finished products.

The composition of the rock can be a combination of various minerals, waste rock and other by-impurities, the ratio of which depends on its deposit.

Magnetic ores differ in that they are based on an oxide that has magnetic properties, but they are lost with strong heating. The amount of this type of rock in nature is limited, but the iron content in it may not be inferior to red iron ore. Outwardly, it looks like solid crystals of black and blue color.

Spar iron ore is an ore rock based on siderite. It often contains a significant amount of clay. This type of rock is relatively difficult to find in nature, which, given the small amount of iron content, makes it rarely used. Therefore, it is impossible to classify them as industrial types of ores.

In addition to oxides, nature contains other ores based on silicates and carbonates. The amount of iron in the rock is very important for its industrial use, but the presence of useful by-elements such as nickel, magnesium, and molybdenum is also important.

Industries of application

The scope of application of iron ore is almost completely limited to metallurgy. It is used mainly for smelting pig iron, which is mined using open-hearth or converter furnaces. Today, cast iron is used in different areas human life, including in most types of industrial production.

Various iron-based alloys are used no less - steel has found the most widespread use due to its strength and anti-corrosion properties.

Cast iron, steel and various other iron alloys are used in:

Mechanical engineering, for the production of various machine tools and apparatus.
Automotive, for the manufacture of engines, casings, frames, as well as other units and parts.
Military and missile industries, in the production of special equipment, weapons and missiles.
Construction, as a reinforcing element or the construction of load-bearing structures.
Light and food industry, as containers, production lines, various units and apparatuses.
Extractive industry, as special machinery and equipment.

Iron ore deposits

The world's iron ore reserves are limited in quantity and location. The areas of accumulation of ore reserves are called deposits. Today, iron ore deposits are divided into:

Endogenous. They are characterized by a special arrangement in the earth's crust, usually in the form of titanomagnetite ores. The shapes and locations of such inclusions are varied, they can be in the form of lenses, layers located in the earth's crust in the form of deposits, volcano-like deposits, in the form of various veins and other irregular shapes.
Exogenous. This type includes deposits of brown iron ore and other sedimentary rocks.
Metamorphogenic. These include quartzite deposits.

Deposits of such ores can be found throughout the entire planet. The largest number of deposits is concentrated in the territory of the post-Soviet republics. Especially Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan.

Countries such as Brazil, Canada, Australia, USA, India and South Africa have large reserves of iron. At the same time, almost every country on the globe has its own developed deposits, in the event of a shortage of which, the rock is imported from other countries.

Beneficiation of iron ores

As indicated, there are several types of ores. The rich can be processed directly after being extracted from the earth's crust; others need to be enriched. In addition to the beneficiation process, ore processing includes several stages such as sorting, crushing, separation and agglomeration.

Today there are several main ways of getting rich:

Flushing.

It is used for cleaning ores from by-impurities in the form of clay or sand, which are washed out using high pressure water jets. This operation makes it possible to increase the amount of iron content in the lean ore by about 5%. Therefore, it is used only in combination with other types of enrichment.

Gravity cleaning.

It is carried out using special types of suspensions, the density of which exceeds the density of the waste rock, but is inferior to the density of iron. Under the influence of gravitational forces, the side components rise to the top, and the iron falls to the bottom of the suspension.

Magnetic separation.

The most common enrichment method, which is based on different levels of perception by the components of the ore of the effect of magnetic forces. Such separation can be carried out with dry rock, wet, or in an alternating combination of two of its states.

For processing dry and wet mixtures, special drums with electromagnets are used.

Flotation.

For this method, crushed ore in the form of dust is immersed in water with the addition of a special substance (flotation reagent) and air. Under the action of the reagent, iron is attached to air bubbles and rises to the surface of the water, and the waste rock sinks to the bottom. Iron components collect from the surface in the form of foam.

A large photo reportage about my favorite mining and processing plant, one of the leading producers of iron ore raw materials: it accounts for more than 15% of commercial ore production in Russia. The filming was carried out over five years and took more than 25 days in total. The very juice is squeezed out in this reportage.

Stoilensky GOK was founded in 1961 in the town of Stary Oskol, Belgorod Region. The main products of the plant are iron ore concentrate and iron sinter ore for the production of iron and steel.

Today there will be a lot of photos, so it's better not to go under the cat with modems or roaming;)

1. Iron ores are natural mineral formations containing iron and its compounds in such a volume that the industrial extraction of iron from these formations is expedient. SGOK takes raw materials from the Stoilenskoye deposit of the Kursk magnetic anomaly. From the outside, such objects look like most industries - some kind of workshops, elevators and pipes.

2. Rarely, when public observation decks are made at the edge of the pit. In Stoilensky GOK, it is possible to approach this huge crater, with a surface diameter of more than 3 km and a depth of about 380 meters, only with permits and approvals. From the outside, you can't say that the skyscrapers of Moscow City will easily fit in this hole, and they won't even stick around)

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3. Extraction is carried out open way... In order to get to the rich ore and quartzite, miners remove and dump tens of millions of cubic meters of earth, clay, chalk, and sand into dumps.

4. Loose rocks are mined with backhoe excavators and draglines. "Backhoes" look like usual buckets, only in the open pit of the SGOK they are large - 8 cubic meters. m.

5. This bucket can easily accommodate 5-6 people or 7-8 Chinese people.

6. Loose rock, which miners call overburden, is transported to the dumps by rail. Every week, the horizons on which the work is done change their shape. Because of this, it is constantly necessary to change the railway tracks, the network, move the level crossings, etc.

7. Dragline. The bucket is thrown forward on a 40-meter boom, then the ropes pull it to the excavator.

8. Under its own weight, the bucket rakes in about ten cubic meters of soil in one throw.

10. Turbine hall.

11. The driver needs a lot of skill to unload such a bucket into the car without damaging the sides or touching the high-voltage line of the locomotive's overhead line.

12. Boom of the excavator.

13. A railway train with dump cars (these are self-dumping cars) transports the overburden to the dumps.

16. On the dumps, the reverse work takes place - the roof of the wagons is stored by an excavator in neat hills.

17. At the same time, loose rocks are not simply heaped, but stored separately. In the language of miners, such warehouses are called technogenic deposits. They take chalk for the production of cement, clay - for the production of expanded clay, sand - for construction, black soil - for land reclamation.

18. Mountains of chalk deposits. All this is nothing more than deposits of prehistoric marine life- molluscs, belemnites, trilobites and ammonites. About 80 - 100 million years ago, a shallow ancient sea splashed on this place.

19. One of the main attractions of Stoilensky GOK is the mining and overburden complex (GVK) with the key unit - the walking bucket wheel excavator KU-800. The GVK was manufactured in Czechoslovakia, assembled for two years in the open pit of the SGOK and put into operation in 1973.

20. Since then, a bucket wheel excavator has walked along the sides of the quarry and cut off the chalk deposits with an 11-meter wheel.

21. The height of the excavator is 54 meters, weight - 3 thousand 350 tons. This is comparable to the weight of 100 subway cars. From this amount of metal, 70 T-90 tanks could be made.

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22. The excavator rests on a turntable and moves with the help of "skis", which are driven by hydraulic cylinders. For this monster to work, a voltage of 35 thousand volts is required.

23. Mechanic Ivan Tolmachev is one of those people who participated in the launch of the KU-800. More than 40 years ago, in 1972, immediately after graduating from the Gubkinsky Mining College, Ivan Dmitrievich was accepted as an assistant to the bucket wheel excavator driver. That's when the young specialist had to run through the staircases! The fact is that the electrical part of the excavator turned out to be far from perfect, so more than one hundred steps had to be overcome until you find the reason for the failure of one or another unit. Plus, the documents were not fully translated from Czech. In order to understand the schemes, I had to sit over the papers at night, because by the morning I had to figure out how to fix this or that malfunction.

24. The secret of the longevity of the KU-800 is in its special mode of operation. The fact is that, in addition to scheduled repairs during the working season, in winter the entire complex becomes overhaul and performing rebuilds of conveyor lines. For three months the GVK is being prepared for the new season. During this time, they manage to put in order all the components and assemblies.

25. Alexey Martianov in the cockpit with a view of the excavator rotor. The rotating three-story wheel is impressive. In general, traveling through the KU-800 galleries is breathtaking.
- You have probably already dulled these impressions a little?
- Yes, there is, of course. After all, I have been working here since 1971.
- So in those years this excavator was not yet there?
- There was a platform on which they were just starting to mount it. He walked here in knots, for about three years it was assembled by the Czech chief-assemblers.
- Was it an unprecedented technique at that time?
- Yes, this is the fourth car that left the assembly line of the Czechoslovak manufacturer. The newspapermen then attacked us. Even in the magazine "Science and Life" they wrote about our excavator.

27. Hanging halls with electrical equipment and switchgear serve as a counterweight to the boom.

I, of course, understand that this is a walking excavator. But I still can't imagine how such a "colossus" can actually walk?
- She walks very well, turns well. A step of two and a half meters takes only one and a half minutes. Here, at hand, a control panel for steps: skis, base, stop, turn of the excavator. In a week we are preparing to change our location, in reverse side let's go to where the conveyor is being built.

28. Aleksey Martianov, the foreman of the GVK machinists, talks about his excavator with love, as if it were an animated object. He says that he has nothing to be ashamed of in this: each of his crew also refers to his car. Moreover, the specialists of the Czech manufacturer, who oversee major repairs of the excavator, are beginning to speak of the living.

29. Only on the upper platform of the excavator, forty meters from the ground, do you feel its true dimensions. It seems that one can get lost in the staircases, but in these intricacies of metal and cable communications there are also work and machine rooms, a hall with electrical equipment, switchgear, compartments for hydraulic units for walking, turning, devices for lifting and extending a rotor boom, cranes, conveyors.
With all the metal and energy intensity of the excavator, only 6 people work in its crew.

31. Narrow iron ladders in places with movable steps entangle the excavator like forest paths. Endless rivers of wires run through the excavator far and wide.

32. - How do you manage it? Are there any secrets of your own? If, for example, a new person comes, in how many months can he be put here, in this chair?
- These are not months, these are years. Learning to work in the cockpit, to crash, to walk is one thing, but to feel the car is quite another. After all, the distance from me to the operator of the loading boom is 170 meters, and we must hear and see each other well. I don't know how, probably, to feel with my back. There is, of course, a speakerphone here. All five drivers can hear me. And I can hear them. You also need to know the electrical circuits, the device of this huge machine. Some people learn quickly, and some become a machinist only after ten years.

33. The design of the KU-800 still surprises with engineering solutions. First of all, the optimal calculations of the bearing units and parts. Suffice it to say that excavators, similar in performance to the Czech KU-800, have much larger dimensions and weight, they are up to one and a half times heavier.

34. The chalk cut by the rotor travels about 7 kilometers through the conveyor system and is stored in the chalk mountains with the help of a spreader.

35. For a year, such a volume of chalk is sent to the dumps, which would be enough to fill a two-lane road 1 meter high and 500 kilometers long.

36. The operator of the loading boom. In total, a shift of 4 people works on the spreader.

37. Spreader - a reduced copy of KU-800, except for the absence of a rotor wheel. The excavator is the other way around.

40. Now the main useful mineral in the quarry of Stoilensky GOK is ferruginous quartzite. Iron in them is from 20 to 45%. Those stones with more than 30% iron react actively to the magnet. With this trick, the miners often surprise the guests: "How is it - ordinary-looking stones, and suddenly they are attracted by a magnet?"

41. There is already little high-grade iron ore in the quarry of Stoilensky GOK. It was covered with a not very thick layer of quartzite and it was almost depleted. Therefore, quartzite is now the main raw material for iron ore.

43. To get quartzites, they are first blown up. For this, a network of wells is drilled and explosives are poured into them.

44. The depth of the wells reaches 17 meters.

46. Stoilensky GOK carries out up to 20 rock blasts per year. At the same time, the mass of explosives used in one explosion can reach 1000 tons. To avoid a seismic shock, the explosive is detonated by a wave from well to well with a delay of a fraction of a second.

47. Badabum!

50. Large excavators load the ore crushed by the explosion into dump trucks. SGOK's quarry employs about 30 BelAZ trucks with a lifting capacity of 136 tons each.

52. 136-ton Belaz is filled with a hill in 5-6 revolutions of the excavator.

55. Vzhzhzhzh!

60. A caterpillar the size of a man.

64. Dmitry, the driver of Belaz, says that driving this "elephant" is no more difficult than a Six Lada.

65. But the rights must be obtained separately. The main thing is to feel the dimensions and never forget with what weight you are working.

73. I am out of focus three years ago. Not yet thinner)

76. Belaz transports ore to transshipment warehouses in the middle of the quarry, where other excavators are already loading it into dump cars.

80. Excavator and its operator.

81. Loaded trains of 11 wagons are sent to the processing plant. Electric locomotives have to work hard, because carrying 1150 tons of ore along the ascending serpentine is not easy.

82. Loaded on the rise and empty on the descent.

85. On processing plant ore is discharged into the mouths of huge crushers.

86. Here it becomes clear why dump cars are used for transportation. If the wagons had not tipped over themselves, unloading them would have been a daunting task.

87. In the process of beneficiation, ore goes through several stages of crushing. On each of them, it becomes smaller and smaller.

88. The purpose of the process is to obtain ore that is ground into almost fine sand.

89. From this crushed mass of quartzite, the magnetic component is selected using magnetic separators.

92. Thus, an iron ore concentrate with an iron content of 65 - 66% is obtained. Anything that is not magnetized to the separators is called waste rock or tailings by the miners.

94. Tails are mixed with water and pumped into special reservoirs - tailing dumps.

95. In fact, the tails also contain iron, only in a non-magnetic state. It is unprofitable to extract it at this stage of technology development. In addition, the tails contain gold and other valuable elements, which are also not recovered due to their low content.

96. But at the same time, tailing dumps are considered technogenic deposits, because, possibly, in the future they will learn to extract valuable elements from them. To prevent dust from blowing up from the tailing dumps, which causes the anger of ecologists and local residents, the tails are constantly poured with rain and rainbows. The benefit of the water from the quarry is heaps!

97. To prevent the quarry from being flooded with water, at a depth of about 200 meters below the ground, a girdling network of drainage shaft drifts was pierced.

99. From the drifts, the total length of which is about 40 kilometers, wells have been drilled up into the quarry, which intercept groundwater.

102. Along the roadways of the mine, water flows into the water collectors and is pumped out to the surface by large pumps.

105. Every hour 4,500 cubic meters of water is pumped out of the drainage shaft of the Stoilensky GOK. This is equal to the volume of 75 rail tank cars.

108. The construction of a pelletizing plant is being completed at Stoilensky GOK. At this factory, roasted pellets will be made from iron ore concentrate so that they can be smelted into pig iron at the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant.

110. The design capacity of the factory is 6 million tons of pellets per year. This is approximately the volume that NLMK Group, which includes SGOK, is now forced to buy from third-party manufacturers. Stoilensky pellets will make pig iron production more efficient.

112. Future chimney.

114. So far, the finished product of the plant looks like this. It seems that the carriages are not completely full, which is not rational. But in fact, this is their maximum carrying capacity. Do not forget that this is not some kind of black earth, but a heavy metal.

115. The 115th photo has already gone, and I still haven't shown and told so many interesting things)

116. Technics, robots, pumps - all this is wonderful. But the most important thing in metallurgy is people.

117. Many thanks for the help in the work of the press service of Stoilensky GOK and separately to Nikolai Zasolotsky! I hope that this year I will visit you again;)

Thank you very much for your attention and patience!

Photographers: Dmitry Chistoprudov and Nikolay Rykov,