Process Design for the Pre-Treatment of Manganese Ores

Technical impediments and costs can turn down the feasibility of a process concept fast. Experimental validation in the early stages of process design improves quality and allows cost estimation for plant scale-up. For the investigation of the pre-treatment of manganese ores, an iterative procedure of experiments and process simulations has been applied. The experiments have been conducted to extract necessary data for a more detailed simulation. Static process simulations have been run using Metso Outotec’s HSC SIM tool. They are refined continuously with new experimental data. This allows for an early integration of energy efficiency and life cycle analysis, defining the best process design in a broad field of performance indicators. This paper explains individual steps in the process scale-up towards an industrial scale plant for pre-treatment of manganese ores.