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

Abundance of supplies iron ore capable of making West Africa the new world center for the extraction of this raw material. According to Renaissance Capital, 100-150 million tons of ore can be mined annually in the region. 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 of this year, Xstrata followed this path, making an offer to purchase Sphere Minerals, which is exploring several iron ore deposits in Mauritania. It is quite logical, because the tax on excess profits of mining companies proposed in Australia is pushing miners towards 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 their reserve base.

However, investing in West Africa comes with significant risks. Some countries have difficulty emerging from protracted civil wars - political instability is very dangerous for investors, as well as undeveloped legislation in the field of subsoil use. Leading experts say this. 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 of governments seizing assets from companies with little or no justification. Macquarie Bank analysts agree with him, who in a recent report wrote: “It is safe to say that some West African raw materials will soon enter the maritime trading market. However, many of the iron ore projects, potentially representing more than 10% of the host country, carry the risk of changes in government policy regarding the growth of benefits. social insurance, royalties, and inaction may result in unexpected loss of rights.”

For example, Rio Tinto lost part of the territory of the Simandou field in Guinea in 2008. The government of this 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 deposit that has not been developed for three years are canceled. Later, the northern part of Simandou was transferred to BSG Resources, a 51% stake of which was acquired by Vale, paying $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 its remaining portion of Simandou. Rio Tinto has instructed design work Chinese state-owned mining company Aluminum Corp. of China and expressed its readiness for full cooperation with the government of Guinea, which expects production at this field to begin soon. 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 runs counter to government plans to quickly begin to receive income from the sale of ore at record prices.

In addition, the license was taken away from the South African Kumba Iron Ore, which was exploring the Faleme deposit in Senegal. In 2007, the government granted the right to develop this field to Arcelor Mittal. Since then, Kumba has been fighting a legal battle with the steel company, demanding compensation for losses, but the parties recently agreed to a settlement (under 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 its Indian partner - the state-owned mining company National Mineral Development Corp. (NMDC). NMDC estimates that infrastructure costs will account for about 75% of the total investment in the project. In particular, it is necessary to build railway 750 km long, which will connect Faleme with the port near Dakar.

In total, Macquarie names 22 potential iron ore projects in the region and indicates that not all of them will be realized. The first export shipments of iron ore from West Africa are planned 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 active.

Now the Russian Severstal has joined the world giants. The company owns 61.5% in the Putu field 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 Liberian government. According to Russian estimates, the cost of the project will be $2.5 billion. The company has already invested $30 million in exploration and feasibility studies and expects to complete the project feasibility study by September 2012.

It appears that political risks in Liberia will gradually decline. After many years civil war(1989-2003), a provisional 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 urgently needs foreign investment, and the authorities are very favorable towards investors who are ready to restore the mining industry destroyed by the war. So the plans of Arcelor Mittal and Severstal have the full support of the government. True, the authorities are not inclined to give in on royalties, and Arcelor Mittal, which was the first to appear in this country, is forced to show unusual generosity in social spending. This is probably what awaits Severstal as well. But judging by the trends in the global iron ore market, the game is worth the candle.

A large photo report 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. Filming took place over five years and took more than 25 days in total. This report squeezes out the most juice.

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

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

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

2. It’s rare when a public quarry is made on the edge of the bowl observation decks. At Stoilensky GOK, access to this huge crater, with a surface diameter of more than 3 km and a depth of about 380 meters, is possible only with passes 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 out)



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3. They are mining open method. In order to get to rich ore and quartzites, miners remove and transport tens of millions of cubic meters of earth, clay, chalk, and sand to dumps.

4. Loose rocks are mined using backhoe excavators and draglines. “Backhoes” look like ordinary buckets, only in the SGOK quarry 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 dumps by trains. Weekly, the horizons on which work is carried out change their shape. Because of this, we constantly have to re-align railway tracks, networks, move railway crossings, etc.

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

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

10. Turbine room.

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

12. Excavator boom.

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

16. On the dumps, the reverse work occurs - the roof from the cars is stored by an excavator into neat hills.

17. In this case, loose rocks are not simply dumped in a heap, but stored separately. In the language of miners, such warehouses are called technogenic deposits. Chalk is taken from them for the production of cement, clay for the production of expanded clay, sand for construction, and black soil for land reclamation.

18. Mountains of chalk deposits. All this is nothing more than deposits of prehistoric sea ​​creatures- mollusks, belemnites, trilobites and ammonites. About 80 - 100 million years ago, a shallow ancient sea splashed in this place.

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

20. Since then, a rotary excavator has been walking along the sides of the quarry and cutting off 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. This amount of metal could make 70 T-90 tanks.



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22. The excavator rests on a turntable and moves with the help of “skis”, which are driven by hydraulic cylinders. To operate this monster, 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 Gubkin Mining College, Ivan Dmitrievich was accepted as an assistant operator of a rotary excavator. That's when I had to young specialist run along the staircase galleries! The fact is that the electrical part of the excavator turned out to be far from perfect, so hundreds of steps had to be overcome before finding the reason for the failure of one or another unit. Plus, the documents were not completely translated from Czech. To understand the diagrams, I had to sit over papers at night, because by the morning I had to figure out how to fix this or that malfunction.

24. The secret of the KU-800's longevity is its special operating mode. The fact is that, in addition to planned repairs during the working season, in winter the entire complex becomes unusable. major renovation and carrying out reconstructions of conveyor lines. GVK has been preparing for the new season for three months. During this time, they manage to put all components and assemblies in order.

25. Alexey Martianov in the cabin with a view of the excavator rotor. The rotating three-story wheel is impressive. In general, traveling through the galleries of the KU-800 is breathtaking.
- These impressions have probably already dulled a little for you?
- Yes, there is such a thing, of course. After all, I have been working here since 1971.
- So in those years this excavator didn’t exist yet?
- There was a site where they were just starting to install it. It came here in knots, and was assembled by Czech assembly supervisors for about three years.
- Was this an unprecedented technique at that time?
- Yes, this is the fourth car to come off the assembly line of the Czechoslovak manufacturer. The newspaper men actually attacked us then. Even the magazine “Science and Life” wrote about our excavator.

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

Of course, I 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 around well. A step of two and a half meters takes only one and a half minutes. Here, at your fingertips, is the remote control for the steps: skis, base, stop, turn 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. Alexey Martianov, foreman of GVK machinists, talks about his excavator with love, as if it were an animate object. He says that he has nothing to be ashamed of: each of his crew treats his car the same way. Moreover, the specialists of the Czech manufacturer who supervise major repairs of the excavator are beginning to speak of the living thing.

29. Only on the top platform of the excavator, forty meters from the ground, do you feel its true size. It seems that you can get lost in the staircase galleries, but in these intricacies of metal and cable communications there are also workers and machine rooms, a hall with electrical equipment, switchgears, compartments of hydraulic walking and turning units, devices for lifting and extending the rotary boom, load-lifting cranes, and conveyors.
Despite all the metal and energy consumption of the excavator, its crew employs only 6 people.

31. Narrow iron ladders with movable steps in places entangle the excavator, like forest paths. Endless rivers of wires pierce the excavator length and breadth.

32. - How do you manage it? Do you have any secrets of your own? Here comes, for example, new person, in how many months will he be able to be seated here in this chair?
- These are not months, these are years. Learning to work in the cockpit, crashing, walking is one thing, but feeling the car is completely different. After all, the distance from me to the loading boom operator is 170 meters, and we must hear and see each other well. I don’t know what to feel with my back, I guess. 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 and structure of this huge machine. Some learn quickly, and some only become a driver after ten years.

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

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

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

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

37. Spreader - a smaller copy of the KU-800, except for the absence of a rotor wheel. Excavator in reverse.

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

41. There is no longer enough rich iron ore in the quarry of the Stoilensky Mining and Processing Plant. It was covered with a not very thick layer of quartzite and was almost worn out. Therefore, quartzites are now the main iron ore raw material.

43. To extract quartzites, they are first blasted. To do this, they drill a network of wells and pour explosives into them.

44. The depth of the wells reaches 17 meters.

46. ​​Stoilensky GOK carries out up to 20 rock explosions per year. Moreover, the mass of explosives used in one explosion can reach 1000 tons. To avoid a seismic shock, explosive undermined by a wave from well to well with a delay of a fraction of a second.

47. Badabum!

50. Large excavators reload the ore crushed by the explosion into dump trucks. There are about 30 BelAZ trucks with a lifting capacity of 136 tons in the SGOK quarry.

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

55. Vzhzhzhzh!

60. A caterpillar the size of a person.

64. Dmitry, the driver of the Belaz, says that driving this “elephant” is no more difficult than the Six Zhiguli.

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

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

76. Belazians transport ore to transshipment warehouses in the middle part of the quarry, where other excavators reload it into dump cars.

80. Excavator and its operator.

81. Loaded trains of 11 cars are sent to the processing plant. Electric locomotives have to work hard, because transporting 1,150 tons of ore along an ascending serpentine road is not an easy task.

82. Loaded for ascent and empty for descent.

85. At the processing plant, ore is unloaded into the mouths of huge crushers.

86. Here it becomes clear why dump cars are used for transportation. If the cars did not tip over on their own, unloading them would be a difficult task.

87. During the beneficiation process, 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 ground almost into fine sand.

89. The magnetic component is selected from this crushed mass of quartzites using magnetic separators.

92. In this way, 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 miners.

94. Tailings are mixed with water and pumped into special reservoirs - tailings dumps.

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

96. But at the same time, tailings dumps are considered technogenic deposits, because, perhaps, in the future they will learn to extract valuable elements from them. To prevent wind from blowing up dust from the tailings, which angers environmentalists and local residents, the tailings are constantly rained down with rainbows. Fortunately, the water from the quarry is in heaps!

97. To prevent the quarry from being flooded with water, a surrounding network of drainage shaft drifts was drilled at a depth of about 200 meters underground.

99. From the drifts, the total length of which is about 40 kilometers, wells are drilled upward into the quarry to intercept groundwater.

102. Water flows down the shafts of the mine into reservoirs and is pumped to the surface with large pumps.

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

108. The construction of a pelletizing factory is now being completed at the Stoilensky GOK. At this factory, burnt pellets will be made from iron ore concentrate to be used to smelt cast iron at the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works.

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 iron production more efficient.

112. Future chimney.

114. Bye finished products The plant looks like this. It seems that the carriages are not completely filled, which is not rational. But in reality, this is their maximum carrying capacity. Do not forget that this is not some kind of black soil, but a heavy metal.

115. The 115th photo has already been posted, and I still haven’t shown or told so many interesting things)

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

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

Thank you very much for your attention and patience!

Photographers: Dmitry Chistoprudov and Nikolay Rykov,

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

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

It is impossible to find it in its pure form; iron is found in certain quantities in many types of rocks. Iron ore has the highest iron content, the extraction of metal from which is the most economically profitable. The amount of iron it contains depends on its origin, the normal proportion of which is about 15%.

Chemical composition

The properties of iron ore, its value and characteristics directly depend on its chemical composition. Iron ore may contain different quantity iron and other impurities. Depending on this, there are several types:

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

The more by-products there are in iron ore, the more energy is needed to process it, and the less efficient the production of finished products is.

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

Magnetic ores are distinguished by the fact that they are based on an oxide that has magnetic properties, but when heated strongly, they are lost. The amount of this type of rock in nature is limited, but the iron content in it can be as good as red iron ore. Externally, it looks like solid black-blue crystals.

Spar iron ore is an ore rock based on siderite. Very often contains significant amount clay. This type of rock is relatively difficult to find in nature, which, coupled with its low 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 content in a rock is very important for its industrial use, but also important is the presence of beneficial by-elements such as nickel, magnesium, and molybdenum.

Applications

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

Various iron-based alloys are no less used - steel is the most widely used due to its strength and anti-corrosion properties.

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

1. Mechanical engineering, for the production of various machines and devices.
2. Automotive industry, for the manufacture of engines, housings, frames, as well as other components and parts.
3. Military and missile industry, in the production of special equipment, weapons and missiles.
4. Construction, as a reinforcing element or construction of load-bearing structures.
5. Light and food industries, as containers, production lines, various units and devices.
6. Mining industry, as special machinery and equipment.

Iron ore deposits

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

1. Endogenous. They are characterized by a special location 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, volcanic deposits, in the form of various veins and other irregular shapes.
2. Exogenous. This type includes deposits of brown iron ores and other sedimentary rocks.
3. Metamorphogenic. Which include quartzite deposits.

Deposits of such ores can be found throughout our planet. Largest quantity deposits are concentrated on 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 iron reserves. At the same time, almost every country on the globe has its own developed deposits, in case of shortage of which, the breed is imported from other countries.

Iron ore beneficiation

As stated, there are several types of ores. Rich ones can be processed directly after extraction 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 methods of enrichment:

1. Flushing.

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

1. Gravity cleaning.

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

1. Magnetic separation.

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

To process dry and wet mixtures, special drums with electromagnets are used.

1. Flotation.

For this method, crushed ore in the form of dust is dipped into water with the addition of a special substance (flotation reagent) and air. Under the influence of the reagent, the iron joins the air bubbles and rises to the surface of the water, while the waste rock sinks to the bottom. Components containing iron are collected from the surface in the form of foam.