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Summer 2018 Edition
How did they get one tonne of chromite?
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XPS Conducts Ring of Fire Chromite Smelting Tests
These include Vertical Tube Furnaces, Hazen Rotary Kilns,
Induction Furnaces a new Bench Top Induction Furnace and
the largest of them all, a 350 KW DC Electric Arc Pilot Furnace.
XPS commissioned the DC Arc Furnace in 2012 and ran
several campaigns for Ring of Fire Chromite ore demonstrating
its amenability to conventional DC electric arc
smelting.
Early in 2018, XPS ran another smelting campaign
using this furnace as part of the NRCan Chromite Development
initiative. Approximately 1 tonne of ore from Noront’s
Ring of Fire Black Thor deposits was prepared, fed into
the furnace and smelted at 1600°C generating a ferrochrome
alloy and slag which were tapped from the furnace
into molds. Extensive workplace and process gas monitoring
were also included in the program. A pilot water granulator
was installed to generate slag granules to simulate
industrial granulation.
The data collected and samples from the testing are
currently being evaluated by NRCan at their laboratories in
Ottawa, Ontario. The information will assist Noront in the
permitting, design and construction of a conventional but
modern, full scale, Chromite smelting facility.
In recent years, the steady, reliable, and secure supply of
critical metals has become increasingly important to major
industrialized economies. Canada, with its significant critical
metal reserves, has an opportunity to supply some of the
global demand for these critical metals.
Test programs with the equipment such as these carried
out at XPS, will assist in developing these world class
chromite deposits located in Ontario’s Ring of Fire making
Canada a significant global producer, processor and
supplier of products that contain the critical metal chromium.
