Milking fly ash for rare earths, alumina to be economically `viable` - Orbite - TECHNOLOGY - Mineweb.com Mineweb
5/18/13 12:06 PM
TECHNOLOGY
Milking fly ash for rare earths, alumina to be economically 'viable' - Orbite Orbite Aluminae takes aim at fly ash with process that can extract aluminum and rare earths from atypical sources. Author: Kip Keen Posted: Wednesday , 26 Sep 2012
HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) The potential value of fly ash, which is ejected during coal power generation and mostly goes to the dump, just got a bit more interesting. On Wednesday Orbite Aluminae, a junior that has patented a process to remove rare earths and alumina (aluminum oxide) from atypical sources, said it expected to be able extract alumina and rare earths from fly ash in a way that would be "economically viable." Of course, the potential is huge and Orbite was sure to marshall out some salient power industry statistics about the coal hungry world we live in; chiefly that coal dominates world power production with a 41 percent slice of the energy pie. Indeed, that means a lot of fly ash. To give you some rough numbers, China, which is the single largest consumer of the world's coal, burns through about four billion short tons of coal a year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Association. The U.S. is next, at 1 billion short tons, followed by Europe, which uses nearly as much, and then India with 800 million tons. For the top two coal users, China and the U.S., that dependence on fossilized energy equates with fly ash production somewhere around 500 million tonnes a year. In 2010 the U.S. alone made about 130 million tonnes of "coal combustion products", as some like to call these leftovers, about half of which was fly ash. "Our industry refers to these materials as ‘coal combustion products' or ‘CCPs' to emphasize that they have significant commercial value," the American Coal Ash Association writes on its website. But that said, most fly ash ends up in dumps, while about 40 percent is reused, primarily in the construction industry as concrete and filler. That so much goes to the dump suggests there is room for more commercialization, no doubt. The implication is that if Orbite's technology proves viable at the industrial scale for power producers then it could open up a large market for Orbite to sell its patented alumina/rare earth extraction processes. It's a similar situation for Orbite in the aluminum industry, for which it says it can render red mud waste, a nasty leftover in aluminum production, inert, and also extract alumina and also rare earths. That has attracted the interest of major aluminum producers which have signed MOUs with Orbite.
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Milking fly ash for rare earths, alumina to be economically `viable` - Orbite - TECHNOLOGY - Mineweb.com Mineweb
5/18/13 12:06 PM
Of course the clincher in the coal case is how well the technology translates to the industrial scale and by extension how economic the process ends up being for users. Will it be worthwhile to install and sell metal for coal power producers rather than throwing it out? Orbite stated this: "This new application of Orbite's technology is anticipated to be economically viable, based on different sources of fly ash, with an alumina content as low as 15%." It then noted minimum recoveries of 88 percent for alumina and 96 percent range for rare earths, using its patented process, which involves acid leaching and then isolation of metals. For reference, Orbite pointed out that fly ash typically contains 5 percent to 35 percent alumina. But what does Orbite mean by economically viable? I asked Orbite to explain and they said the following in an emailed statement. "In the context of our press release issued today, we used the terms ‘economically viable' to explain that there is a positive return on investment coupled with a definite environmental impact reduction when using the Orbite technology based on different sources of fly ash with an alumina content as low as 15 percent. Using the Orbite technology allows the recovery of commercializable elements such as alumina, iron (hematite), and others stated in today's release to generate revenues for companies." In other words, coal power producers could make money by selling metals in their fly ash. It will be interesting to see how lucrative this return on investment may be at the industrial scale. If it is fat, coal power producers with suitable fly ash would be silly not to license the process from Orbite (as Orbite wants to do with aluminum producers as regards their red mud.) And by extension, if the return on investment is high, then Orbite could command premium licensing fees. Alternatively, if the payback is long and returns meagre, then coal power producers would be less inclined to adopt the new technology, even if doing so would green-up their operations.
Topics: FLY ASH, COAL, CLEAN COAL, ALUMINUM, ALUMINA, RARE EARTH OXIDES, ORIBTE ALUMINA, PRODUCTION, RED MUD
About Kip Keen
Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Kip is Mineweb's North American junior mining specialist. Before joining Mineweb he worked for Canada's top mining publication, the Northern Miner covering the junior sector out of Vancouver. Email: Kip@mineweb.com Follow @JrMining
Disclaimer MINEWEB is an interactive publication, with rolling deadlines through each day, commencing in the Sydney morning, and concluding, 24 hours later, in the Vancouver evening. If you believe your side of an issue deserves inclusion, but has failed to meet one of our deadlines, you are invited to notify the Managing Editor, and we will include you in our editing and expanding on our stories. Email him at geoff@mineweb.com
10 May 2013
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Milking fly ash for rare earths, alumina to be economically `viable` - Orbite - TECHNOLOGY - Mineweb.com Mineweb
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