Swedish iron ore producer LKAB has announced that it will invest in pilot plant facilities and will industrialize an innovative technology for upgrading mine waste from iron ore production, which may result in LKAB producing phosphorus and rare earth metals, which in the EU are classed as strategic minerals that are of particular importance to the industry.
According to LKAB, initially two pilot facilities are planned: one plant in the ore fields to produce an apatite concentrate and one plant, possibly in Uppsala, to upgrade the concentrate. Both plants will be commissioned in 2019 and will operate until 2020.
"LKAB's ores contain the phosphate mineral apatite, as well as rare earth minerals. It has not been profitable to extract these from waste materials and they are part of the material that is currently deposited in sand tailings ponds. Together with environmental services company Ragn-Sells, we are creating conditions for industrializing a profitable extraction process. We will then build full-scale plants, where the tailings sand can be recirculated and processed into strategically important minerals without the need to develop new mines," stated Jan Moström, LKAB's president and CEO.