Sungging Pintowantoro

Abstract:

Indonesia is the world's major supplier of nickel ore, particularly the type of laterites nickel ore. Carrying nearly 25 % of the world's nickel ore is supplied from the country. But on the other hand, the price of Indonesian nickel ore is largely determined by developments in the world price of nickel metal. Almost all products of nickel ore from the mines in Indonesia is still exported abroad in the form of ore raw materials that do not provide high added value. Therefore, the increase in value-added nickel is a very logical and will benefit for the country. A process has been developed whereby nickel laterites can be smelted in MBF to produce NPI. The production capacity is 840kg NPI per day for 1,6%Ni laterite nickel ore. Anthracite Coals are used as reductor and dolomites are used as a flux in MBF. All raw materials have 7 cm of diameter and entered into MBF in layers. The air blast supplied with fresh air without preheating and oxygen enrichment. All of the raw materials are coming from the country itself. The MBF off-gas is used in tunnel kiln combustion as fuel addition for nickel laterite ore pre-treatment. This pretreatment process allows conditioned ore entering MBF which has a lower moisture content. The NPI produced from this MBF has higher nickel content (20 – 25%Ni) and the average Ni yield is 70%. MBF uses single tap hole for tapping process. After tapping process, the product (hot metal and slag) are cast in three different height of mould. So it allows the separation of hot metal and slag in the last mould. After solidification, then the product are crushed for hot metal and slag separation. KEYWORDS: Laterites nickel ores, nickel pig iron, mini blast furnace.