The Indian Bureau of Mines citing information based from the country's revised National Steel Policy reported India's steel production has been forecast at 180 million tonnes a year in order to meet projected demand by 2019/20. To achieve this, the country needs at least 500 million tonnes of iron ore a year. However, current and actual production levels are only at 220 million tonnes a year.
The present level of iron ore reserves in India is sufficient, the IBM said in a report titled Indian Iron and Steel: Vision 2020. the report said that "This brings us face to face with issues of conservation and beneficiation followed by aggloremation of beneficiated fines.”
India has a huge potential in low grade ores in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Maharasthra, Goa and Karnataka. But exploration efforts have been highly inadequate, as well as harder to develop and sustain, because of regulatory risks and struggles involving land acquisitions, displacement of locals and environmental clearances. Almost all those major iron ore belts have been exploited for high and medium grade iron ores over the last six decades.
The report said that "It is obligatory on part of the mining industry to exploit low grade resources which are currently considered as waste.”
To address the country's iron ore supply shortage problem, IBM proposed a series of short term measures to sustain India's iron ore sector that would also boost much needed supplies to the iron and steel industry. These included the immediate use of available stacked fines in noncaptive sectors and slimes stored in tailing ponds of iron ore washing plants as well as stacked marginal grade ores through deployment of appropriate beneficiation technology.
Slimes are the by product generated during the wet processing of ore. These slimes are generally just dumped in tailing ponds. India's NMDC Limited, its largest iron ore miner, has 20 million tonnes of slime, accumulated over the years, which unfortunately already pose hazards to the community and the environment.
IBM urged India's mining industry to find a better use to the slimes and convert it as a nonrenewable resource rather than just treating it as waste.
Among the long term measures suggested by the report included converting existing hematite resources into reserves by detailed exploration followed by feasibility, exploring the possibility of the persistence of hematite at depths beyond 50 metres or from existing pit bottoms of existing mines, as well as evolving suitable technology for use in goethite rich ore in iron making.
(Sourced from community.nasdaq.com)
