Mining Concession

About the Mining Concession

The Mining Concession covers a 55-km-long zone in the Simandou Mountain Range. Drill assays from previous exploration programs on the Simandou Range indicated a high-grade hematite, with a concentration of over 67% Fe (Iron), and an estimate of over 3 billion metric tons of iron ore resources. In fact, the nearby Pic de Fon iron ore deposit has an estimated 1.2 billion metric tons of iron ore at a grade of about 65% to 68% iron (Source: Guinea Ministry of Mines and Geology, 2005d). It is this fact together with the previous tests done in the area that have lead U Mining and its team to believe that this Mining Concession will soon be regarded as a world-class iron ore resource, and the Simandou region home to Africa's largest iron ore deposits.

About 98% of the iron ore mined worldwide is used to make steel -- one of the greatest inventions and most useful materials ever created. While the other uses for iron ore and iron are only a very small amount of the consumption, they provide excellent examples of the ingenuity and the multitude of uses that man has created from our natural resources. Powdered iron is used in metallurgy products, magnets, high-frequency cores, auto parts, and catalyst. Radioactive iron (iron 59) is used in medicine, and as a tracer element in biochemical and metallurgical research. Iron blue is utilized in paints, printing inks, plastics, cosmetics (eye shadow), artist colors, laundry blue, paper dyeing, as a fertilizer ingredient, in baked enamel finishes for autos and appliances, and in industrial finishes. Black iron oxide is used as pigment, in polishing compounds, metallurgy, medicine, magnetic inks, and in ferrites for the electronics industry.		  
 


   
  * Cast iron is a partly refined iron that contains up to 5 per cent carbon. This makes it very hard, but brittle. These properties make it ideal for molded parts, like car engine blocks.
* Wrought iron is nearly pure iron mixed with a glasslike material. Unlike cast iron, this type of iron does not rust, and is softer, which makes it suitable for use in outdoor furniture, porch railings and other decorations.
* Steel is the most common form of iron. It contains about 1 per cent carbon and has properties that make it an excellent material for thousands of different uses.
* Stainless steel contains chromium, which makes it very resistant to rusting. This makes an ideal material for motor vehicle parts, hospital equipment and food preparation tools and utensils.
* Tool steel is extremely hard, and is used in metalworking tools. It is produced by tempering certain types of steels by putting them through quick heating and cooling cycles.

How iron is mined
Explosives are used to blast through surface rock to access iron ore deposits below the ground. Haul trucks transport the ore to crushing plants, where the ore is crushed into smaller pieces of varying sizes. Crushed ore is then classified into different sizes based on customer specifications.

The ore is next transported via rail to ports for shipping to overseas customers or smelters. Iron ore usually ends up in blast furnaces and steel mills, where it is turned into iron and steel through smelting and refining.

How iron is processed
Iron ore is smelted in blast furnaces to produce pig iron. In a blast furnace, coke and ore are fed through the top of the furnace while heated air is blasted into the bottom of the furnace at temperatures of around 2000°C. The chemical reactions that take place as the ore and coke move down creates molten metal and slag which settle to the bottom of the furnace, where the molten slag floats on top of the more dense molten iron. Iron and slag are tapped off separately from the blast furnace.

Once cooled, the iron is called pig iron. Pig iron is not pure iron as it has 4 to 5 per cent carbon in its makeup. Pig iron is used to produce steel or commercially pure iron (wrought iron) through further smelting and refining in furnaces and converters.