China puts into operation first industrial facility extracting iron from mining waste

China has officially commissioned the world's first industrial-scale facility to extract iron from previously unusable mining waste and low-grade ores following official inspections.

Capacity and Production Scale

According to a statement by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the production line, which has an annual processing capacity of 5.56 million tons of refractory iron ore and mining waste, has successfully passed official inspections.

The project was implemented in Anshan, Liaoning province, as a core component of Ansteel Group's plan to reprocess 24 million tons of iron waste annually.

Import Dependency and Reserves

Meeting more than 80 percent of its demand through imports, China is the world's largest consumer of iron ore, with low-grade ores making up the majority of its reserves.

Approximately half of the country's existing reserves stand out for their challenging and high-cost structures, which make them impossible to process using standard methods.

New Magnetizing Roasting Technique

Researchers at the Institute of Process Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new technique that magnetizes difficult-to-process non-magnetic iron minerals.

This technology increases the iron content in mining waste from 11 percent to 65 percent in the concentrate, enabling billions of tons of waste to be utilized.

Facility Structure and Environmental Features

The project, which began operations in January, consists of three separate production lines, each with an annual capacity of 1.85 million tons, producing 2.2 million tons of iron concentrate per year at the facility.

Consuming 35 percent less energy compared to similar methods, this process has been included in the National Development and Reform Commission's list of first green and low-carbon demonstration projects.