By Dr. Saul J.
Ladder
(Ph.D. Metallurgy Chemical, USA)
Ex-Professor da Escola de Postgraduacäo em Engenharia, UFMG Belo
Horizonte, Brazil
Professor Emeritus, UMSS
Friends of free classroom,
Walter's comments Alcides Núñez and couples (both very capricious), recently published in Free Lecture (April 2006) regarding the case of Puerto Suárez EBX certainly deserve a proper technical answer. Gentlemen, EBX case is not political or regional, but quite technical. And it's not that if the government has the capacity to dialogue with people of EBX to save your project in Puerto Suarez, as the friend asked Walter Nunez. EBX is that the project was born as a lost cause, as demonstrated below. Furthermore, it is entirely contrary the interests of the country, it is designed to produce only iron (iron semifinished product) to feed mills Urucum and does not include the production of construction steel and iron end products, condemning Bolivia to continue to import profiles, nails and sheets of iron from Brazil to meet our needs and high prices.
Technologically, I explained in several articles published by AulaLibre last year, which should never have been allowed to build the plant because its technology EBX, based on charcoal as a reducer of iron ore is obsolete and extremely harmful to the environment, not only for the millions of trees that should be sacrificed to feed the blast furnace reduction of iron ore that built the EBX in Puerto Suarez to produce pig iron, but because the reduction process will produce thousands of tons per day of carbon monoxide CO carbon (the same gas that kills people leaving coal in his bedroom for warmth and found dead the next day, so does the exhaust from cars). This CO emanating from the blast furnace and cast into the air and polluting the environment, has severe penalties for Bolivian Law 1333 and for the monitoring and control bodies of the global environment, for example: Environmental World Watch, countries that produce environmental pollution in industrial activities. This fact has also been alerted by the Bolivian Forum on the Environment FOBOMADE www.fobomade.org.bo / pantanal_bolivia / hierro_mutun.php (Access, December 23, 2005).
is by this that in many European and American countries that use coal technology as a reduction of iron in blast furnaces, these industries are gradually being closed, and instead emerge direct reduction furnaces with natural gas ( methane reforming), which is globally known as DRI (Direct Reduction of Iron). As its name indicates, the manufacturing process of sponge iron is via DRI more direct and clear because the gases leaving the chimney of the furnace are mostly water vapor and some carbon dioxide. Finally, the use of methane reforming is more efficient than coal, vegetable or mineral is to reduce iron, it has to do with the kinetics of the process. Only in countries like Brazil, where there is lack of natural gas and has an enormous appetite for iron and steel, allow themselves the "environmental heresy" to use charcoal in the process.
However, regarding Walter Nuñez comment on whether "there was no loophole for dialogue with the EBX for this remedy as repairable (understanding have not irreparable things to make EBX hopeless, I do not think) achieved in this process takes hold interest in investing millions of dollars in a region which in itself is marginalized in the interest of those in power ?. Does all the EBX was so wrong, so illegal, so reprehensible that we must now bring them to these men with sticks? Is not the nation's largest state a Brazilian company to be able to sit down and seek an outcome that is good for everyone, including of course the inhabitants of the province Germain Bush? The answer is that, unfortunately, the charcoal furnaces (furnace type) technically can not be processed or redesigned to use natural gas (type vertical furnace of Cuba and in other cases retort), so it is impossible to recover, therefore, are now useless and only serve as a monument to something that should never have been allowed in Bolivia.
Finally, it is inconceivable how some leaders of Santa Cruz may believe that in the case of Mutún all comes down to the political and regional, as mentioned, "the government's ineptitude, when instead of sitting with investors to know about the project and give them the opportunity to correct all correctable, what they do is send a signal to the world saying that nobody can definitely Bolivia invest cent, because here we are macho and we can do everything ourselves, "as Núñez. O in protest Couples, when he says," is a good size and we constantly are running around with the sword sheath. And this practice of running around going back to the historical moment in which the Andean centrist Government saddled us turn the san benito separatists, which was cleverly manipulated to abort any order that is made from Santa Cruz, so much so that over time Santa Cruz are victims of what could well be called the 'complex separatist. " Please!, Let's be clear, the issue of EBX is not political and regional chauvinism, is purely technology, as I explained above.
I am the first to recognize that the people of Santa Cruz has every right to claim the industrialization of natural resources that lie within its territory, but do it right!. And that is exactly what the current government is doing!, When placed under foreign investors interested in developing the Mutún Reservoir to produce about 8 million tons of steel per year (which is the largest steel complex world, believe me), powered by methane reforming DRI will use the vast amounts of natural gas we have in Bolivia. And here we highlight the work done by national technical experts (I am one of them) who analyzed the project Mutún poorly prepared by the consulting Paribas and introduced changes that were absolutely required to do under the terms of reference for bidding. Based on these changes, the steel complex to be built in the area Mutún consist of 3 levels: (1) flotation plant benefit of iron ore concentrates to produce 68% of Fe, which is labor-intensive use of labor intensive qualified, (2) Plant direct reduction iron (DRI Process) from concentrate, and (3) manufacturing plant of crude steel (billets) and sections of iron construction with high added value that are sold worldwide at great prices. The bidding ends on May 30 with the award winning project to the investor for the good of the country and particularly in Santa Cruz.
Dear brothers of Santa Cruz ('m Cochabamba and you are my brothers), I admire its economic dynamism and cultural events, especially the Baroque Music Festival being held this week and where Katie (my daughter and soprano lyric) is one of the stars of the event as solo English Ensemble Florilegium. But do not defend something that is done, unconstitutionally and more technically all wrong. Case EBX must be buried, and ask them to bet on the new project Mutún being tendered and it will bring development to the region, with an investment of over one billion dollars, and soon will give us many benefits in terms of value aggregate (building iron and steel billets raw or flights to the country), lots of jobs (estimated at more than 9,000) and higher revenues to the country TGN. And finally, let the national government to work for their region and country.
GOD GIVE PEACE AND QUIET!
skalera@entelnet.bo
Cochabamba, Bolivia
