Advanced Processing of Lateritic Ore

Abstract

Laterite ore is one of the mineral resources contains several kinds of metal elements, such as nickel, cobalt, iron, silicon, aluminum and chromium. It is widely distributed in the equatorial region and is mainly used as a nickel resource. However, the utilization is limited to only the laterite with high content of nickel. While the nickel-less laterite ore has never been used effectively in spite of the huge deposit, it sometimes has high content of iron. As high grade iron ore deposit becomes less year by year, the high iron content of laterite is quite attractive as an iron resource. A series of process to utilize the high iron content laterite ore as an iron resource is introduced. Beginning with description of the physical and chemical characteristics of laterite ore including dehydration treatment, the process is started with comminution and agglomeration following by selective reduction of laterite ore using mixed gas. The reduced laterite ore is then subjected to nickel extraction through leaching process. The next step is recovery of iron from leached-laterite residue in the form of magnetite compound using magnetic separator which is finally subjected to reduction process for iron extraction.