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Table 6.-U.S. imports for consumption of crude 1 and processed magnesite, by country

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1 Not specifically provided for; includes magnesium silicofluoride or fluosilicate and calcined magnesium

304

453

Value Short Value
(thou- tons
sands)
$19 43,685
26 34,939
15 45,597

Short Value

(thou- tons
sands)

(thou

sands)

$605

3,727

$372

617

3,608

327

654

2,889

Greece.-Magnesite

Mining

WORLD REVIEW

Industrial

and Trading Co., S.A., was formed to mine, process, and market magnesite on the island of Euboea. This company is owned 45 percent each by the Chemical Products and Fertilizers Co. (BodossakisAthanassiades group) and D. P. Papastratis and Co., and 10 percent by the National Investment Bank for Industrial Development. Magnesite Mining Industrial, capitalized at $1.8 million, planned to extend operations to cover other minerals at a later time.

Financial Mining-Industrial and Shipping Corp. (Scalistiri group) proposed a 70,000-ton-per-year increase of its heattreating facilities at Mantoudi, Euboea, where a refractory brick plant is under construction. Macedonian Magnesite S.A. (Scalistiri group) was installing a 120,000ton-per-year ore-dressing plant at Vavdos, Khalkidiki.

Hungary.-Magnesite Industrial Works of Budapest developed a process whereby Hungarian dolomite and carbonic acid are used as chief feed stock to produce synthetic magnesite of 98.5 to 99.2 percent purity. A pilot plant, built in the northeast part of the country, will be used for semiindustrial testing of the process. National

Iceland.-The

Research

Council of Iceland planned to build a chemical complex using geothermal steam and sea water to produce 250,000 tons per year of salt and 107,000 metric tons per year of magnesium chloride. Capital investment for the salt plant, which would also produce per year 58,000 tons of calcium chloride, 25,000 tons of potassium chloride, and 700 tons of bromine, was estimated at $13 million. The magnesium chloride plant would cost an additional $13 million.

Reykjanes peninsula in southwest Iceland was a possible site for the plant. The National Energy Authority of Iceland drilled eight steel-lined, 9-inch-diameter steam wells on the peninsula in an area of less than 1 square mile. The wells were from 531 to 5,740 feet deep. The deepest well produced steam at 150°C at a rate of 100 tons per hour.

Japan. Shin Nihon Chemical Industries Co., a subsidiary of Asahi Chemical Industries Co., Ltd., completed expansion of its sea water magnesia facilities at Minamata on Kyushu Island. Two heavy oil-fired multiple-hearth furnaces built in Japan to the specifications of Steetley Co. Ltd. of the United Kingdom were in operation at full capacity. Shin Nihon's total capacity to produce sea-water magnesia was over 200,000 tons per year.

The new $10 million facility of Ube Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. began operations to produce 120,000 tons of synthetic magnesio-dolomite refractory materials. The new facility used the expanded lime plant from the main plant across the river. The new site had its own sea-water handling pumps, lime slakers, thickeners, rotary drier, and rotary kiln. Ube's total capacity to produce magnesia was over 400,000 tons per year.

South Africa, Republic of.-Magna Mining (Pty) Ltd., through its associate company, Romada (Pty.) Ltd., established the existence of a 22-million-ton deposit of magnesite in Eastern Transvaal. This was the largest deposit discovered in South Af rica to date. The average chemical composition of the ore was magnesium carbonate, 80 percent plus; calcium carbonate, 8 percent; silicon dioxide, 3.5 percent; and ferrous oxide, 0.4 percent.

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W Withheld to avoid disclosing individual company confidential data.

1 Quantities in this table represent crude salable magnesite. Magnesite is also produced in Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, and Southern Rhodesia, but data on production are not available.

* Estimated from data reported as MgO.

* Year beginning March 21 of that stated.

TECHNOLOGY

A water treatment process that will cut costs and eliminate pollution from the disposal of alum sludge was developed.2 Magnesium and calcium minerals, which are removed from municipal water supplies by flocculation with aluminum hydroxide, can be recovered for reuse or sale. Carbon dioxide gas dissolves magnesium hydroxide in the sludge, leaving calcium carbonate for return to the lime kiln. The resulting magnesium bicarbonate solution is heated to 35°-45°C, followed by aeration, and the magnesium is precipitated as the carbonate trihydrate. The carbonate can be vacuumfiltered, dried, and bagged for shipment. Clay and other colored or turbid material can be disposed of as landfill and are the only wastes from the entire operation. This process was tested in batch operations at the Ottawa water treatment plant in Dayton, Ohio. A pilot plant for continuous water treatment at 50 gallons per minute is scheduled for operation at Montgomery, Ala.

A magnesium-base acid sulfite evaporator comprised a major portion of a system scheduled to reclaim spent chemicals, curb discharges, and reduce the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of water effluent from Crown Zellerbach's paper mill bisulfite pumping operation in Camas, Wash.3 Digesters are loaded with wood chips and heated at 330° F for five hours in an acid solution of magnesium bisulfite. During the digestion, lignin is dissolved and becomes part of the spent cooking solution that is considered waste. The spent liquor is concentrated from 8.4 percent solids to 60 percent solids; it then can be burned as fuel oil in a recovery furnace. This procedure evaporates the balance of water remaining in the liquor, burns the lignin, producing heat and generating steam for

2 Chemical and Engineering News. Water Treatment: No Alum Sludge. V. 49, No. 39, May 1971, p. 8.

3 American Metal Market. Chemical Recovery System Attacks Magnefite Pollution. V. 78, No. 172, May 1971, p. 23.

mill use or electrical generation, and produces a fly ash which is the spent cooking chemical. The wood solids are converted to carbon dioxide and water, and the magnesium and sulfur compounds to magnesium

oxide dust and sulfur dioxide gas. The magnesium oxide dust is collected, washed, and slaked to magnesium hydroxide, which is reacted with the sulfur dioxide gas to produce magnesium bisulfite for reuse.

Manganese

By Gilbert L. DeHuff 1

Although a small tonnage of manganese nodules was shipped in 1971, there was no actual production in the United States of manganese ore, concentrate, or nodules, containing 35 percent or more manganese. Slackened demand for manganese ferroalloys resulted from lowered levels of steel production worldwide and general sluggishness of the economy. U.S. imports of manganese ferroalloys and metal were substantial, although ferromanganese imports were down somewhat from those of 1970, having fallen off in the last quarter from the high rate that prevailed earlier. One new domestic ferromanganese plant, that of Airco, Inc., at Theodore, Ala., was brought on stream, and substantial increases in productive capacity were underway in several countries abroad.

Legislation and Government Programs. -Public Law 92-100, approved August 11, gave the Administrator of General Services Administration (GSA) authority to dispose of 4,424,840 short dry tons (manganese ore equivalent) of metallurgical-grade manganese held in the national and supplemental stock piles. Public Law 92-101, also approved August 11, authorized disposal of 4,805 short dry tons of

synthetic manganese dioxide held in the national stockpile. Both laws provide that time and method of disposition be such that producers, processors, and consumers are protected against avoidable disruption of usual markets. GSA continued to follow its policy of limiting deliveries of metallurgical ore to 300,000 tons per fiscal year.

Sales of metallurgical ore on a negotiated basis in calendar year 1971 were 921,576 short tons; sales of synthetic manganese dioxide were 3,991 short tons. Several GSA offerings to sell surplus chemical-grade and natural battery grade ore during the calendar year on a sealed-bid basis resulted only in one sale of 486 short dry tons of natural battery ore, at a price of $45 per ton.

Manganese stockpile inventory changes in the calendar year consisted of the following: Metallurgical ore, stockpile grade, decreased 256,432 short tons to 8,163,241 tons; metallurgical ore, nonstockpile grade, decreased 14,447 tons to 1,393,571 tons; synthetic dioxide decreased 2,278 tons to 19,638 tons; and stockpile grade natural battery ore decreased 441 tons to 253,496

tons.

1 Supervisory physical scientist, Division of Ferrous Metals.

Table 1.-Salient manganese statistics in the United States

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