The Russian mining and steel producing company Mechel has announced that its Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant has began test melting of an industrial probe of quartzites from the plant's own resource base, namely, from the Uvatsk deposit.
Accordingly, the intermediate results of melting of the industrial probe of quartzites, the main raw material used in ferrosilicon production, showed that the Uvatsk deposit's reserves are suitable for production of ferrosilicon with 65 percent silicon content.
The test melting, which is conducted in one of the plant's furnaces, will continue until May this year. By that time, Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant will use some 10,000 mt of quartzites in its furnaces. The results, received after the entire test lot is used, will enable the determination the material's final industrial and technological characteristics and thus make further usage of Uvatsk quartzites as efficient as possible.
Transferring production to use of quartzites from its own deposit will allow Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant to be independent of external sources, as well as to get new qualitative measures of the final product.
Bratsk Ferroalloy Plant won the tender for the rights to utilize the subsoil plot on the Uvatsk deposit of quartzite and quartz sandstones in May 2008. Industrial exploitation of the Uvatsk quartzite deposit is due to be launched in the second half of 2011, once the reserves receive state registration.