AB MINERALS UPDATED PRESENTATION - A New Separation Technology to Process Tan...
02-Disruptive-Innovation
1. IAEA
International Atomic Energy Agency
Leadership Academy on Sustainable Uranium and
Critical Materials Production from Phosphates and
Other Sources
24-28 August, Nanchang, China
Thermal processing of low-grade phosphate rocks for
recovery of P, U and REE using HTRs: A case for disruptive
innovation?
Hari Tulsidas, IAEA
7. IAEA
Innovation Vs Creativity
Innovation – The capacity to change reality
Creativity – Skill to change perception
To innovate is to make something new in
the system
To be creative is to think about a new
system
8. IAEA
Not a single idea is born good
Change
Time
Old useful
New
New useful
9. IAEA
Adjacent possible
• In 1870 Stephane Tarnier,
obstetrician in Maternite de Paris,
saw a chicken incubator in a
nearby zoo.
• Every year more than 20 million
babies are born prematurely or
with low birth weight
• Lives could be saved by simply
keeping them warm.
• He asked Odile Martin, the zoo’s
poultry raiser to construct a similar
device for human newborns.
• That brought down infant
mortality in the first week of
birth from 67% to 38%.
11. IAEA
The Slow hunch
“… it at once struck me that under
these circumstances favourable
variations would tend to be
preserved, and unfavourable ones
to be destroyed. The result of this
would be the formation of new
species. Here, then, I had at last
got a theory by which to work.”
Charles Darwin, Autobiography
on his September 28, 1838
experience
“Journalists have always asked me
what the crucial idea was, or what
the singular event was, that allowed
the Web to exist one day when it
hadn’t the day before. They are
frustrated when I tell them there
was no “Eureka!” moment . . .”
Tim Berners-Lee, on the
invention of World Wide Web
13. IAEA
How can good companies fail?
“How did Sears do it? In a way, the
most arresting aspect of its story is that
there was no gimmick. Sears opened
no big bag of tricks, shot off no
skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though
everybody in its organization simply did
the right thing, easily and naturally. And
their cumulative effect was to create an
extraordinary powerhouse of a
company.”
Fortune, May, 1964
“Sears has been a disappointment for
investors who have watched its stock
sink dismally in the face of unkept
promises of a turnaround. Sears’ old
merchandising approach—a vast,
middle-of-the-road array of mid-priced
goods and services—is no longer
competitive. No question, the constant
disappointments, the repeated
predictions of a turnaround that never
seems to come, have reduced the
credibility of Sears’ management in
both the financial and merchandising
communities.”
Forbes, May, 1990
14. IAEA
What is disruptive innovation ?
•Disruptive innovation helps create a
new market and value network, and
eventually disrupts an existing market
and value network, displacing an earlier
technology.
•Sustaining innovation improve the
performance of established products,
along the dimensions of performance
that mainstream customers in major
markets have historically valued.
15. IAEA
Slumdog Millionaire …
•Result in worse product
performance, at least in the near-term
•Underperform established technology
•But may be fully performance-
competitive in that same market
tomorrow.
•Bring to a market a very different
value proposition than had been
available previously
•Cheaper, simpler, smaller, and often
more convenient.
•Precipitate the leading firms’ failure
ultimately
17. IAEA
Small markets don’t solve the growth
needs of large companies
• To maintain their share prices and
create internal opportunities for
their employees, successful
companies need to grow.
• Therefore, it difficult for them to
enter the newer, smaller markets
that are destined to become the
large markets of the future.
18. IAEA
“Two or nothing …”
Kayelekera, Malawi
-mid-year 2013 cash costs were
reported to be $39.20 per pound
U3O8.
-based on current spot uranium
prices of $35 per pound
-pay out an estimated $20-25 million
per year to keep operations going
-company will not contemplate either
the restart of production in Malawi or
a currently suspended major
expansion of Langer Heinrich until
uranium prices "reach at least $75
per pound
Kayelekera operations, Malawi
19. IAEA
Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
•Economically viable rock deposits
contain a very wide range of ores with
phosphate (P2O5) content anywhere
from 3.8% to 38%.
•Total global resources estimated at
300 billion tonnes, but economic
reserves estimated to be only 67
billion tonnes.
•Generally, resources are considered to
be upgradable to phosphate rock
product containing 30% or more
P2O5 economically.
•Vast majority of the presently un-
economical resources are low P2O5
deposits, with grades ranging from
10-20% P2O5.
•A majority of the world’s phosphate
reserves is difficult to beneficiate
due to high magnesium content
most commonly as dolomite.
•Generally, acidulation of phosphate
rock requires a feed of less than 1%
MgO content
•Some low-grade phosphate ore,
contains iron and aluminum. The
Minor Element Ratio (MER -
(MgO+Fe2O3+Al2O3)/P2O5 in
percent for commercial wet process
requires MER of 0.1 or less.
20. IAEA
Thermal route
•Thermal processing was developed
from 1933 onwards by the Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA) and was used
widely to produce phosphoric acid from
1934–1977.
•Is used to produce elemental
phosphorus that is then oxidized to
P2O5.
•The process involves the high
temperature (greater than 1100 C).
•The process gives phosphoric acid
of high purity, which can be used in
detergent and food industries
•Ability to use low-grade phosphate
rock and rocks with high MER
KPA processes
Integrated processes based
on a rotary kiln reactor 1937-
1983
• failed commercially as a result
of a combination of kiln
burden, melting and
operating problems.
• Can succeed if electric
resistance heating could be
replaced in an electric furnace
process by an efficient heat
integration process
21. IAEA
The ranking
1. Dihydrate Process
2. Hemi-Dihydrate Process
3. Hemi-Dihydrate Recrystallization
Process
4. Hemihydrate Process
5. Di-Hemihydrate Process
6. Nitrophosphate Process
7. Furnace Process
8. Thermal Process
9. Hydrochloric Acid Route
Donal S. Tunks of Jacobs Engineering
22. IAEA
Uranium extraction
• Extraction by hydrometallurgy
(xHy)
• Fragmentation of slag by immersion of
molten material in water
• Extraction by pyrometallurgy
(xPy)
• Volatilisation (fluoride volatility). Has
been used in an advanced reprocessing
of spent nuclear fuel, where the oxide
fuel is treated with fluorine gas to form a
mixture of fluorides. This mixture is then
distilled to separate the different classes
of material.
• Liquid-liquid extraction using immiscible
metal-metal phases or metal-salt
phases
• Electrolytic separation in molten salt
• Fractional crystallisation.
23. IAEA
Thermal processing technology
•Technology is not totally radical;
thermal route has been adopted for
producing may metal products
•Use of HGTRs – not a new
technology –it is well proven and
offers the benefit of small scale
•Phosphate industry already has a
niche thermal processing industry
for producing high purity products
•Convenient – Possibility of zero
wastes makes HTR-TP convenient to
be located anywhere, and provides
higher social return. It by-passes the
contentious PG problem.
24. IAEA
We will not touch it!
•Lower production volumes
•Higher cost per unit of
production (mainly due to lower
production volumes)
•Lower cost structures and profit
margins
•Established phosphate industry
value network (supplies,
distributers and investors) also has
higher cost structures (higher profit
margins)
•Resource dependence – existing
customers control resource allocation
•Small markets don’t solve the growth
needs of large companies
•Markets are not established, hence
unknowable
•Core capabilities of established industry
reside not only in the people, but also in
processes and organizational values
(business culture)
25. IAEA
The Lean start-up
•Smaller markets / smaller projects
with a fraction of capital and operating
costs
•Differentiated products (De-
commodification)
•Comprehensive extraction of all
valuable elements – P, S, F, REE, U,
Cd, Pb as pure fractions
•Possibility of producing U as UF6 ,
which can be directly sent of
enrichment, by-passing refining and
conversion processes.
•High energy requirements is the
greatest constraint for adoption of
thermal processing, but HTRs offers
another disruptive innovation pathway
Social acceptability!
•Better environmental performance
•New skills generation
•Low requirement of competing
resources
•Zero wastes
27. IAEA
Impatience pays!
“Good ideas are not
adopted automatically.
They must be driven into
practice with courageous
impatience.”
Hyman Rickover, US Admiral (1900
- 1986)
First nuclear reactor in true sense -
Hanford.
The design was set out by Eugene
Wigner in 1942, even before a chain
reaction was demonstrated!. He went
straight to 500 MWt when no zero MWt
plant existed.
The design was completed in five
months. First chain reaction – the
Chicago pile- was demonstrated just
before the design was completed.
Construction started in August 1943
and it was fully commissioned by
October 1944.
It took 2.5 years from an idea to reality,
and Wigner was furious that it took this
long.
