Firstenergy Corp. (FE)

[echarter]

Moriarity's articles as always are interesting. A little bit slanted to Cardero's brave venture but interesting.

Moving 14 tons of sand to get one ton of iron is brave too. They did not say how they were going to do that. Trucks, conveyors or slurry. I always thought that the idea was to remove the ilmenite from the sand before you smelt, as most smelters judge it a penalty to have TiO2 in your feed. A few have tried that. Most of the irons sand projects have not attracted a market. Even with 25% FeTiO3, Fancamp while not a sands project, did not attract much of a market and it is the same grade as the richest mine in Canada, run by Rio Tinto, at Havre St. Pierre in PQ. Two other sands projects in Canada, in the oil sands and in Nova Scotia seem not to have much audience these days.

Ilmenite is FeTi03 and slightly magnetic. It holds promise of being removed from an magnetite feed by flotation, electrostatics, magnetic induction or even super gravity as than magnetite is heavier than Ilmenite. (5.18 to 4.7 SG.) That does not sound like much but super gravity increases SG differences in an absolute sense. In a field of 300 G's the difference between the two minerals is 144 units not merely .48, so the separations is potentially 300 times better.

Another neat trick might be to roast the magnetite to Fe2O3 which makes it non magnetic and then separate the sands by high speed high mag field belts which would work preferentially on the Ilmenite, but don't quote me.

EC<:-}