Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT) has patented a process that converts brown coal into a feedstock that can produce clean, low carbon steel and is already operating a pilot plant near Melbourne.

At the Cleantech Forum in Melbourne last month ECT chairman Murray d’Almeida said the company’s Coldry process resulted in a black coal equivalent product for just half the current international spot price for black coal.

“Using the company’s unique Coldry process we can take what was once considered to be the ‘poor relation’ of the coal family, high-moisture brown coal, and reduce the coal’s moisture content from 60 percent to 12 percent, turning it into a high-value feedstock equal to black coal,” he said.

In addition, ECT has constructed a test plant that uses a blended feedstock of brown coal, low-grade iron ore (which was previously unmarketable) and limestone, which the company said produces cleaner, low-carbon steel by way of a low-emission single retort. ECT said the process was half the cost of traditional steelmaking processes and required half the capital cost.

The Victorian company’s short-term plans involve licensing its technologies internationally and possible joint venture activity. The company said there were longer-term options to provide feedstock to possible coal-to-oil ventures and to major electricity generators looking for lower emission feedstock.

Published in the May 2007 Australia’s Mining Monthly