OREANDA-NEWS. Vale is expanding its Ferrous Metals Technology Centre (known by Portuguese acronym CTF) to help discover and inform its customers of the best applications for the coal it produces. Before the end of this year, the centre, located in Nova Lima in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, will host an advanced laboratory designed to analyze and test coal extracted from our company’s reserves in Africa and Australia.

Even before the new facilities are ready, the CTF is already receiving coal samples from our mine in Moatize, Mozambique, for metallurgical testing and microscopic analysis. Thanks to the technology centre’s new lab, it will now be possible to simulate the entire process of transforming raw material into metallurgical coke. This will raise productivity, reduce costs and increase control of gas emissions.

At the CTF, Vale is conducting research in the whole iron ore usage chain, from mine to steel plant. Using physical and numerical simulations, it is possible to test and define all kinds of things, from processing routes to the behaviour of ore in steel mills. The center has cutting-edge equipment such as a Mossbauer spectrometer, which is capable of characterizing different iron ore compositions. Vale has 11 technical cooperation agreements with steelmaking customers in Brazil, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.?