Before installation of the new plant, the primary problem facing MIEL was the variation in feed material that was sourced from a variety of mines; high fines content in the feed was particularly troublesome. MIEL invested in the plant after CDE Asia conducted extensive test-ing of the feed material to determine the actual quality improvements that could be achieved. Testing was conducted at CDE Asia’s testing facilities.

Following installation, the new wash-ing plant reportedly removes all of the low-grade fines and slimes, resulting in a higher quality ore. This not only increas-es efficiency in the kilns but delivers a washed ore product that MIEL can sell to export markets at a premium price.

“We were able to demonstrate to Monnet Ispat & Energy that they would enjoy considerable benefits from the installation of our washing plant in the quality of the material processed, ability to handle variation in ore quality, segre-gation of feed material for different kilns and, of course, reduction of contami-nants,” said Dr. A. Bandyopadhyay, pres-ident of technology, CDE Asia.

The new processing plant provides a 5- to 25-mm product for the DRI plant, a 2- to 5-mm product and a 0.075- to 2-mm product. After washing of the iron ore fines through the CDE Evowash sys-tem, waste water is delivered to an Aquacycle thickener that enables approx-imately 90% of process water used to be recycled—significantly reducing the vol-ume of fresh water required to feed the washing plant.

Prior to the introduction of the CDE washing plant, the minus 5-mm product contained 7% minus 75-micron material which was the major cause of the ineffi-ciencies encountered by MIEL in its steelmaking processes. The new plant has reduced this level to 1.5%, which not only has improved the Fe grade of the feed material and extended campaign life by 10%, but has also resulted in improved metallization.

MIEL, the flagship company of the Monnet Group, is India’s second largest sponge iron producer with annual output of 1 million mt/y. The company is in the process of expanding the capacity of its steel and sponge iron facilities and set-ting up greenfield steel plants in Raigarh (Chhattisgarh) and Angul (Orissa) which would lift total steel capacity to 3 million mt/y and sponge iron to 2.3 million mt/y.

CDE Asia, an Indian company found-ed in 2007, is a partnership of CDE Global (UK) and the Bhartia family. It is headquartered in Kolkata, India.