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This study examines the Uralian iron and steel industry distribution, its changes through time and the reasons for these changes. At present, this is one of the important iron and steel producing regions in the world. At one time it was the most important. In order to obtain the information on which to base this study, it was necessary to resort mainly to published materials, largely Soviet. The American Iron and Steel Institute also supplied some non-published material. In order to collect the published materials it was necessary to make use of the libraries of the University of British Columbia the University of Washington and the Geographical Branch of the Department of Mines and Technical Surveys in Ottawa. Other Ottawa libraries, the personal collections of Dr. Hooson and Dr. Jackson, various bookstores, notably Kamkin's bookstore in Washington, D. C, the bookstore at the United Nations in New York and Davis bookstore in Montreal, were also very useful. The primary problem when conducting a study of this nature is the collecting of sufficient relevant materials for a balanced appraisal of the phenomena being examined. A knowledge of Russian is mandatory and an acquaintance with French is also useful. The information gathered was organized into tables and plotted on maps. These bodies of data were then described and analyzed. Analysis of the Uralian iron and steel industry indicated that this industry was initially essentially located on the iron ore supply. But none of the major plants are at present located on iron ore resources that are large enough to amortize the plant. Also the major plants are on the whole, based on low quality ores. The major economic advantage of the Uralian iron and steel industry production is its association with the Eastern coal supplies. But this advantage is common to all Eastern plants. Expansion at Magnitogorsk will result in more expensive production than the construction of new plants would, even though Magnitogorsk is the most efficient Uralian plant. The Urals is well located for the introduction of natural gas into its metallurgy. This is proceeding. Nevertheless, the use of natural gas is only a partial solution to the fuel problem because it can not completely replace coke. Therefore, the Urals will have to continue bringing in coking coal over great distances. The de-emphasis of iron and steel announced in 1962 will help the Urals to perpetuate its present status as a producer (it supplies about one-third of the Soviet production). On the other hand, no significant increase in its relative importance can be expected. The bulk of the Uralian iron and steel production is located in the Eastern Urals, more particularly in the South Eastern Urals. In 1956, the three largest plants: Magnitogorsk and Chelyabinsk in the South Eastern Urals, and Nizhne Tagil'sk in the Central Urals produced 77 per cent of the Uralian pig iron and 67 per cent of the steel smelted. This has not significantly changed subsequently. Considerable expansion, based on Kachkanar ores, is planned for Nizhne Tagil'sk. But, all things considered, most of the expansion will be located at the major South Uralian plants. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

As the world population has exceeded 7 billion in 2011, the global awareness of sustainability arises more than ever since we are facing unprecedented challenges in energy, water, material and climate change, in order to sustain our current and future generations on this planet. The Guardian has named the Iron Bridge opened in 1781 across the River Severn, Shropshire, UK as the cradle of the modern world, which is the world's first cast-iron bridge and remains as the enduring symbol of the Industrial Revolution (Guardian, 2009). Ever since, in the spanning of 250 years, iron and steel have been the cornerstone of modern industries from developed countries to developing ones especially for those which are still experiencing their major urbanization process. Nevertheless, iron and steel making are among the most raw material-dependent and energy intensive industries with large gaseous pollutants, CO2 and waste generations in the world. Therefore there is a pressing need to solve these resource and environmental problems associated with the iron and steel making. This work addresses a number of challenges stated above by focusing on the improvement of the overall sustainability of this highly energy-intensive industry via (1) utilizing inexpensive iron ore tailings to enhance the material sustainability, (2) CO2 reduction by mineral carbonation using its own solid waste stream, i.e., iron and steel slags, and (3) slag valorization through the use of carbonated slags as sustainable construction materials. This work begins with the study of an ironmaking plant using the direct reduced iron (DRI) process, which is a molten iron production method utilizing fluidized bed and melter-gasifier technologies. This technology allows the direct production of the molten iron using the inexpensive iron ore tailings and the non-coking coal, during a gas-solid reaction in the fluidized bed. Practically, a higher percentage of the fine particles (i.e., iron ore tailings) is favored to mix in the feedstock because it is cheaper than the traditionally used coarse particles (i.e., bulk and fine iron ores). The challenge of this novel technology is attributed to the entrainment of the fine particles during the gas-solid fluidization. Since the electrostatic phenomenon was significant during the particulate fluidization systems which might affect the particle entrainment, the electrostatic charge generation and accumulation were investigated for binary and quaternary particulate systems. Specifically, the effect of the addition of two different iron ore tailings (i.e., hematite and magnetite) in the fluidized bed was studied in terms of particle-particle interactions, electrostatics, and entrainment rates. The behaviors of different particulate systems were found to be highly dependent on the chemical and physical properties of the particles. The results suggested that the enhanced electrostatic forces between the fine and coarse particles due to the electrostatic charging during the fluidized bed operation retained the fines to some extent and the sintering of the fine particles could happen on the surface of the coarse particles during the iron ore reduction. Therefore, for this fluidized bed based DRI process, iron ore tailings are proved to be able to replace the coarse iron ores to the extent that fine particles will sinter but not be entrained and thus the overall cost of raw materials could decrease. In iron and steel making, limestone and dolomite are also mixed in the feedstock to remove the impurities of the iron ores, mostly silica, which forms slag as a silicate-based material in the downstream of this process. Slags of different types have been reused as cement clinker, aggregate, road base and fertilizer. Recently, iron and steel slags have also been deemed as alternatives for mineral sequestration because these slags are similar to natural Ca/Mg-bearing silicate minerals. The accelerated weathering of natural minerals or industrial wastes is an environmentally benign route to thermodynamically stabilize carbon. Thus, another study of this work is fixing the CO2, especially emitted from the iron and steel plant, into the slag, a solid waste generated from the same processing stream. In particular, the stainless steel slag has been a focus since its application in construction materials has been limited due to the high content of FeO and the environmental concern of heavy metals leaching (e.g., Cr). Along with the iron and steel making, the cement industry is also among the largest industrial CO2 emitters. Mixing carbonated slags as a filler material in the cement mortar while guaranteeing the overall quality of the cementitious material could reduce the usage of limestone and the carbon emissions from limestone calcination and reduce energy input during the cement production. In this study, the production of environmentally benign cementitious material was coupled with the direct carbonation of stainless steel slag. Compressive strength, exothermic behavior and leaching behavior of the mixed cement mortar were investigated. Particularly, mixing 10 wt% of the direct carbonated stainless steel slag sample prepared at 30 °C in a Portland cement did enhance the compressive strength of the cement mortar. Also, the mixing retarded the hydration and overall setting time. Finally, the Cr leaching of the cement mortar with the addition of the direct carbonated stainless steel slag was minimized. Thus, the iron and steel industry and cement industry should collaborate, to minimize their overall material input, energy usage and carbon emission jointly. During the direct carbonation, stainless steel slag and CO2 flows are introduced into the solvent simultaneously. Whereas for the two-step process, calcium ions are extracted from the solid matrix into an aqueous phase, and then the CO2 is bubbled through and reacts with the Ca. The two-step route allows optimizing the conditions for both the dissolution and the carbonation. Moreover, the precipitated end products (e.g., precipitated calcium carbonates, PCC) from the two-step process, normally with higher quality compared to direct carbonated slags, can be adapted for various industrial and construction applications. However, the overall reaction is constrained by the kinetics of the stainless steel slag dissolution. Thus several organic and inorganic chelating agents were applied in order to accelerate the dissolution. Some of these agents were found to be desirable for the dissolution of stainless steel slag at different pH via the differential bed study. Ligand concentration and temperature affected the extent of the extraction in the batch reactor. For the carbonation step, PCC from the modeled chemical solution and the dissolved stainless steel slag solution were non-identical, which was also affected by the reaction pH and temperature. The properties of the PCC prepared in the batch reactor and the bubble column reactor were also found to be dissimilar. Thus, for an iron and steel plant that adopts the two-step carbonation of slags for CO2 reduction, the end products could be engineered by tuning the reaction conditions to meet different end-user requirements. On the other hand, there have been significant efforts to reduce the cost of the two-step carbonation, including the utilization of value-added byproducts like iron oxide. In particular, silicate minerals or industrial waste often contain 5~20 wt% of Fe and by dissolving the iron into aqueous phase, a variety of Fe-based materials can be synthesized by precipitation. In this work, Fe-based catalysts were synthesized from serpentine and stainless steel slag (SSS) and applied to the biomass-to-hydrogen conversion via an alkaline thermal treatment pathway. The synthesized Fe-based materials were compared with the purchased hematite and magnetite and the reduced Fe-based catalyst derived from SSS was found to be catalytically active. This suggests an opportunity to produce inexpensive catalysts from the solid waste of the iron and steel making. Finally, a novel iron making scheme based on a fluidized bed DRI system was proposed by this study. It combined all the studies above that inexpensive iron ore tailings were used as a feedstock for the iron production, slags were utilized for sequestering CO2 and ended as filler materials for cement mortar. Preliminary economical and life cycle assessment was investigated based on the current scale of an existing industrial plant. An economically, environmentally and ecologically favored iron, steel and cement production system could be potentially achieved with improved overall material sustainability and carbon footprint.

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Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 959-1004).

Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1979. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 959-1004).

M.Sc. (Environmental Management) / With the rapid expansion of the industries in South Africa, environmental problems including air pollution have been increasing. Among industries that cause air pollution is the iron and steel industry. Air pollution impacts negatively on the environment and therefore the measures implemented to improve air quality by this industry were investigated. The purpose of this thesis was to critically analyse the air pollution control measures implemented by the iron and steel industry in South Africa and to find out what they are doing to address the problem of air pollution, as well as their processes in involving and encouraging community involvement with regard to environmental issues. The key findings from this study were that the South African iron and steel companies are doing their best in trying to control the problem of air pollution. Some of them do not only rely on the South African legislation, they also do self-regulation by monitoring and controlling the air pollution problems even if not strictly required to by legislation. The iron and steel industry does also involve communities, through participation in public environmental forums. Air pollution has always been an issue in South Africa, but due to a lack of enabling legislation in the country, many people were not aware of their environmental rights. Now that the South African Constitution highlights the rights of people to an environment that is not harmful to their health or wellbeing, people are becoming more aware and have started taking the issue of air pollution in a very serious light. With the new environmental legislation including the National Environmental Management Act 108 of 1009 and the National Environmental Management: Air Quality Bill (Draft 1, April 2003), most of the issues relating to air pollution will be dealt with in a better and more enforceable way.

M.Com. (Business Management) / Please refer to full text to view abstract