Bagdaulet Kenzhaliev
Director, Institute of metallurgy and concentration, Doctor of engineering sciences, professor

    Since recently the metallurgical science has been facing an extraordinary challenge to ensure a responsible use of such nonrenewable natural resources as ores of non-ferrous and ferrous metals.
Tasks to provide economic efficiency of production, protect the environment and secure Kazakhstan’s steady development became particularly pressing along the way.
Many problems are inherited from the times of the planned economy, when the key requirement was to raise metal production by any price, ignoring the need to perfect technologies in terms of their technical as well as physical and chemical characteristics.
Today, securing supply of raw materials for the republic’s metallurgy is one of the most urgent problems. There is nothing new to it. The Institute of metallurgy and concentration with Kazakhstan’s ministry of education and sciences has been looking into it since the second half of the last century. As was predicted, by the beginning of this century Kazakhstan’s metallurgy encountered the problem of quality of the raw material base. It became clear that processing should involve chemically and mineralogically complex polymetallic ores, nonstandard ores as well as technogenic raw materials, which are abundant in the republic amounting to about 2 billion cubic meters.

ZHAIREMSKY MINE & CONCENTRATOR JSC Zhairemsky Mine & Concentrator JSC operates in Central Kazakhstan (the Karaganda region). The company is extracting and processing manganese, iron and barium ores to produce marketable concentrates. At present, it is implementing the project to set up production of ferromanganese alloys. The company’s products are destined to become highly competitive. The key to this is the high-capacity base of mineral raw materials, high quality of manganese ores with low content of detrimental impurities, modern industrial and social infrastructures, cheap construction materials and electric power, skilled personnel. The project provides for: Expansion of the existing Ushkatan-III mine to increase the annual volume of extracting primary low-iron ore up to 1.2 million tons; Reconstruction of the concentrator; Construction of sintering production facilities to process fine-grained concentrates; Construction of electric melting production facilities. The project envisages the use of the latest Western technologies of mining, concentrating and metallurgical production. Period of repaying borrowed capital to implement the project’s first phase is 8 years, no par value cost is $55 million, IRR is 60 %. 478751 Republic of Kazakhstan, Karaganda region, Zhana-Arkinsky district, Zhairem township, 20 Murabatov St, Zhairemsky Mine & Concentrator JSC Fax: (8-310-40)-3-00-11, Tel.: (8-310-40)-3-00-02, E-mail: jgok@mail.krg.kz

The situation is paradoxical: Kazakhstan is among ten leading countries by deposits of metallic ores but is placed lower than 40th by their metal content. We believe that sooner or later the rest of the
world will also face this problem. But as far as we are concerned, we have to solve it today already.
The analysis proves that the existing scientific base of metallurgy does not meet requirements of processing complex, multi-component raw materials. Metal-slag equilibrium theories, theories of electrochemical processes, of electrolysis and so on need to be revised. New regularities should be found that would reflect more accurately the processes taking place in metallurgical units.
This is a longstanding situation in metallurgy. After the importance of natural sciences for scientific substantiation of technologies was realized at the beginning of the XX century, it led to the explosion in metallurgical production. The established scientific base made it possible then to do research on monometallic raw materials (high-grade ores, rich selective concentrates, etc.). Results of research works allowed to greatly reduce the significance of empiricism for perfecting technologies and to push the development of the metallurgical science fast forward.
Transforming metallurgy into an independent discipline was accompanied by a growing number of scientists-metallurgists and establishing a network of research and educational centers. Their work contributed to setting up properly organized and efficient production facilities, reducing cost of producing metals, developing an extraordinarily wide range of functional materials, alloys and composites. However, more than half a century later quite a few fundamental tenets of chemistry, physics and physical chemistry became no longer valid. And, as is usually the case with sciences, they turned from progressive guidelines into dogmas impeding development of technologies, particularly with respect to complex ores, concentrates, solutions and intermediate products of the metallurgical process. Kazakhstan’s scientists and metallurgic engineers are perfectly aware of the need to update the scientific base with a view to working out technologies adapted to complex raw materials. The Institute of metallurgy and concentration is doing a lot in this respect. A large-scale research has been completed for arranging extraction of gold from off-balance ores, tailings and overburden
rocks, including those, which are complex by their mineralogical composition and chemically refractory. We were lucky enough to find technical solutions on the basis of biotechnologies and natural materials that provided a complete utilization of harmful substances used in gold extraction.
The new technology is absolutely safe ecologically.The institute’s scientists are constantly perfecting Vanukov’s smelting method, one of the most efficient ways of oiling by splashing used in copper pyrometallurgy. They are creating new technical modes that permit to use polymetallic concentrates with low copper content. We successfully introduced new technologies of recovering rhenium from semi-products of copper production as well as technologies of obtaining radiogenic osmium. The institute’s research fellows are actively seeking solutions to problems of mastering technologies for electric remelting of local raw materials to get highly titaniferous slag. Efforts are being made to work out technologies and find ways of utilizing metallurgical production waste such as coal slime, ash and slag dumps, of reprocessing red mud of aluminum production and low-quality molybdenum-containing raw materials. Technologies of obtaining superpurity metals have been tested on industrial scale. The institute has facilities for a small-lot production of superpurity selenium that could process all selenium produced in the country.
The institute’s specialists suggested an ecologically safe technology of liquidating mercury contamination of soil. This will help solve one of those serious problems, which are facing today not only the CIS but many other countries of the world.
The institute is doing research on improving quality of produced metals. One of its goals is to upgrade electric conduction of copper by 3 % to 5 % and increase its mechanical strength and wear resistance by 10 % to 12 %. Unconventional technologies to protect metals from corrosion and mechanical wear are being researched. If successful, these studies will permit to reduce metal consumption on a scale that goes beyond the republic’s borders.
Work is underway to create new alloys of aluminum and silicon, which will increase their high-temperature strength by 15 % to 20 % and wear resistance by 10 % to 15 % along with the rate of processing by cutting by 8 % to 10 %. Such alloys are very important for aircraft and engine-building industries as well as for designing structures of submarines.The institute worked out a concept of a complex use and deep reprocessing of mineral and technogenic raw materials as well as secondary metals so as to produce metal-based materials and composites with programmed properties. This concept resulted from original studies by the institute’s scientists, who analyzed formation and structural changes of phases in liquid and solid systems. These studies also covered the mechanism of first- and second-kind transitions of phases.
Scientists researched the mechanism and kinetics of restoring metals from multi-component oxides.
They were driven by the desire to get a more realistic and accurate idea about the structure of non-organic aqueous solutions and other theoretical achievements. The studies provided a basis for new research in the field of materials in general. New approaches are being formed with respect to concentrating mineral raw materials since the old scientific base of concentration technologies no longer meets requirements of industrial production and does not ensure progress in this extremely important scientific as well as practical area of metallurgy.

CONCERN ELROVO SEEKS COOPERATION ÀÂÀ Concern Elrovo was founded in 1993 by Eltai Abenov. The main type of its activity is iron ore production. In 1997, the enterprise acquired shares of OAO Atasuruda, which is engaged in underground mine production. In 1998, the concern started to develop Atansor iron ore deposit by the stoping mining method in the steppe of the Akmolinsk Region. This allowed to provide Karagandinsky Metallurgical Works with new sources of high quality raw materials. In the nearest future, OAO Concern Elrovo plans to increase iron ore production facilities and supplies of raw materials to Russian metallurgical plants. The short-term plans of the concern include iron ore benefication and production of concentrate. Concern Elrovo seeks a dialogue and constructive cooperation with all Kazakh and foreign producers, and, firstly, with those, who produce and process iron ores. Address: 470014 Karaganda, Ul. Asfaltovaya, 16/1 Tel/fax: 3212 440844, 440843, 440826 E-mail: elrovoland@hotmail.com

We are not alone in our efforts to accomplish such strategic tasks in the metallurgical science. The institute is fruitfully cooperating with scientists of Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Israel, Canada and other countries. At the Kiev conference of the International association of science academies in May 2002 the president of the Ukrainian academy of sciences Boris Paton supported our undertakings. Ways of cooperating on the most pressing problems were discussed and an agreement on forming a creative union was signed. A similar agreement was signed in Moscow with academician Nikolai Lyakishev, the director of the A. Baikov institute of metallurgy and materials.
Our colleagues in the West also realize the potential of scientific research on technologies of reprocessing complex multi-component mineral raw materials. The institute’s scientists regularly receive invitations to participate in forums in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, Great Britain and other states. We regard it as a beginning of broad creative cooperation between metallurgists of different countries, schools and trends.