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Markets
Minerals & metals
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Location
Brazil
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Client
Vale
Maria de Lourdes Bahia
Mining & Metallurgy Vice-president, Nova Lima, Minas Gerais, Brazil contact form+55 31 3298 5413
The steel industry is responsible for about 8% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Vale, one of the largest logistics, minerals and metals companies in Latin America, pioneered an innovative product, iron ore briquettes, that can drastically reduce emissions in the steelmaking process. We designed and engineered a large capacity production facility by transforming Vale’s oldest iron ore pelletizing plant into the world’s first iron ore briquette plant, reducing mining’s impact on the environment and helping steelmakers reduce their emissions.
Iron ore briquettes are small pillow-shaped pieces made from iron ore and a binding solution. They can replace sinter, pellets or lump ore in blast furnaces during the steelmaking process, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the “sintering” process by up to 10%—specifically from sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. Plus, Vale can produce briquettes by utilizing recycled “tailings,” or waste, and without consuming water, unlike pellets or lump ore.
Because the new plant is on a brownfield site, we had to retrofit an existing Vale facility first built in 1976. Team members spread across Brazil used 3D modeling, building information modeling (BIM) and the augmented reality platform Augment, to envision interventions for the existing facility before implementing them on site, saving resources and time.
We began the project in July 2020, and in December 2023, Vale successfully commenced operations at the Port of Tubarão in Vitoria, Espiritu Santo, Brazil for the new facility that boasts a production capacity of 2.0 million metric tons per year (MTPY) of cured briquettes.We are currently engineering a second facility in Vitoria which will open in 2024 with a capacity of 4.0 MTPY. Vale aims to initiate more than 30 briquetting projects worldwide in the coming years. “Mega Hub” projects—industrial complexes that will integrate iron ore concentration plants, briquetting plants and plants for hot briquetted iron (HBI) production—are also on the horizon.
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