Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HAlMan (Sustainable Hydrogen and Aluminothermic Reduction Process for Manganese, its alloys and Critical Raw Materials Production)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2023-01-01 al 2024-06-30
The primary objective of HAlMan is to demonstrate at TRL 6-7 an integrated sustainable European process to produce Mn metal and Mn master alloys from a variety of primary and secondary raw materials. HAlMan is based on two key processes currently at TRL 3-4. Furthermore, HAlMan demonstrates sustainable economic routes for using these metals and the process by-products to produce commercial alloys, and a variety of feedstock materials for metallurgical, construction, and energy industries.
HAlMan brings together industry stakeholders from the mining industry, ferroalloy industry, alumina and Al industry, foundry industry, steel industry, technology industry, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and research organisations to collaborate to pilot the process and develop business cases. Project achievements will be shared with other industries and organisations such as construction, automotive, aerospace.
HAlMan brings together industry stakeholders from the mining industry, ferroalloy industry, alumina and Al industry, foundry industry, steel industry, technology industry, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and research organisations to collaborate to pilot the process and develop business cases. Project achievements will be shared with other industries and organisations such as construction, automotive, aerospace.
The main focus during the first reporting period has been on mapping and analysing available manganese (Mn) sources around the globe. Mn-sources that contain higher amounts of CRM (REE) has been identified and the HAlMan process has been optimised for one ore type in lab scale and partly finalised in pilot scale. A few more ores are under evaluation in lab scale and the most promising ore types will be optimised for the upcoming pilot trials in HAlMan. Three different pre-reduction technologies will be evaluated and compared in the project i) hydrogen reduction of lumpy ore in plasma rotary furnace at SINTEF, ii) hydrogen reduction of lumpy ore in vertical retort furnace at Mintek and iii) flash Hydrogen reduction of fines in drop tube reactor at CALIX LTD. Sintef has completed their pilot trial and Mintek has done the first part of their pre-reduction pilot trial. Calix will conduct their pilot trial during RP2. Mintek has completed two aluminothermic smelting pilot trials i) with pre-reduced ore from Sintef and Mintek and ii) discarded Mn-slag from Transalloy. The produced alloys from the two trials will be validated in aluminium and iron alloys by Hydro respectively Odlewnie and CRM will be extracted from the grey mud, a product from the hydrometallurgical treatment of the CaO-Al2O3 rich slag to be conducted by Metlen. The obtained grey mud will be evaluated as component in cement by imperial collage. Environmental studies linked to the identified business cases are under development. The HAlMan consortium has a strong focus on dissemination and communication and they have already organised a clustering event titled “Hydrogen use in process metallurgy” and given presentations a 9 international conferences.
The resource mapping activities in WP2 has shown that Mn-ores contains many different CRM that is under utilized today. Focus is hence to demonstrate a process where more elements from the Mn-ore body is extracted and utilized than today (A more resource efficient process that SoA FeMn production). Also it has been demonstrated that the produced alloy contain minor elements of carbon which is advantageous for the steel producers. The main reason for this is because aluminum is used as reductant instead of carbon.