Ce qui se déplace réellement
Pilbara hematite is rich enough to ship almost as it comes out of the ground. There is no flotation, no smelting, no chemistry at the mine — just crushing and screening, a private heavy-haul railway and a purpose-built port. All the transformation happens on another continent.
- Le matériau
- Iron Ore
- La variété
- Direct-shipping hematite fines, around 62% iron
- Où cela commence
- Australia — The Pilbara, where banded iron formation was laid down over two billion years ago
Étape par étape, et frontière par frontière
Australia · Pilbara, Western Australia détenu par Rio Tinto, BHP, FMG and others (Mineur)
Blast, load, haul
Enriched hematite is drilled, blasted and hauled — much of it by autonomous trucks and driverless trains.
Pourquoi ici: Weathering leached the silica out of ancient banded iron formation and left almost pure hematite behind.
Australia · Mine-site plant détenu par Miners (Mineur)
Crush and screen. That is all.
Crushed and screened into lump and fines. No concentration is needed — the ore is already close to a saleable grade.
Ce qu'il est advenu du reste: Almost nothing is discarded. Compare that with copper, where 984 tonnes in 1,000 go to tailings.
Pourquoi ici: Where the ore is good enough to ship, nobody builds a plant.
China · Port Hedland to Chinese mills détenu par Miners and steelmakers (Négociant)
Rail, port, Capesize
Trains up to 2.5 km long run to a private port, and Capesize bulkers sail to China. This is the highest-tonnage trade route on the planet.
Pourquoi ici: The steel mills are in Asia and the ore is in Australia. The whole business is logistics.
China · Integrated steelworks détenu par Steelmaker (Fabricant)
Sinter, coke, and a blast furnace
Fines are sintered into lumps; coking coal is baked into coke. In the furnace the carbon strips the oxygen off the iron oxide — a chemical reaction, not just heat.
Ce qu'il est advenu du reste: Roughly 500 kg of coking coal per tonne of hot metal, and the CO2 that comes with it. This reaction is why steel is hard to decarbonise.
Pourquoi ici: Integrated steelworks sit next to ports and next to demand.
China · Basic oxygen furnace détenu par Steelmaker (Fabricant)
Blowing the carbon back out
Oxygen is blown through the hot metal to burn the carbon down to a few tenths of a percent. Manganese goes in — every tonne of steel needs some — and then whatever else the grade calls for: chromium, nickel, niobium, vanadium.
Pourquoi ici: Steel is the alloy where a dozen other materials in this atlas quietly end up.
China · Rolling mills détenu par Fabricators (Fabricant)
Buildings, cars, rail, ships
Cast, rolled and cut. 620 tonnes of steel is roughly the frame of a mid-rise building, or five hundred cars.
Ce qu'il est advenu du reste: Steel made from scrap in an electric arc furnace emits a fraction of this route's carbon. How fast steel can decarbonise depends on how much scrap exists — and you cannot recycle steel that has not been built yet.
Pourquoi ici: Two countries, one ocean, and by weight the largest thing humans move.
Il s'agit d'un exemple traité. Il suit une quantité de départ déclarée à travers des rendements et des taux de récupération typiques publiés, de sorte que les proportions sont vérifiables ; ce n'est pas le relevé d'un envoi spécifique. Les données d'itinéraire — quels pays, quels procédés, et pourquoi le matériau ne peut simplement pas être traité ailleurs — sont compilées à partir de sources publiques.