The new pilot screening and pelletizing plant opened - insights and outlooks

The New Screening and Pelletizing Testing Center Opened

The HAVER & BOECKER NIAGARA Group inaugurated its new screening and pelletizing pilot plant on May 2021 in the presence of Florian Festge, managing partner of HAVER & BOECKER OHG and Dr. Metodi Zlatev, managing director of HAVER Engineering GmbH as well as the scientific advisory board of HAVER Engineering in Freiberg.

A technical center for washing and pelletizing has already successfully existed at the site since 2009 and is characterized by close cooperation in the area of research and development with the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, in particular with the Institute for Processing Machines and Recycling Systems Technology. This is also reflected in the company’s name as an affiliated institute of the university. This connection is now extended by the field of screening technology. Thus, HAVER Engineering Freiberg is the central test and development center for the screening and pelletizing technology divisions of the HAVER & BOECKER NIAGARA Group with its locations in Münster (Germany), St. Catharines (Canada) and Pedro Leopoldo (Brazil).

Freiberg as a traditional scientific location for extraction, processing and recycling offers an outstanding environment with a large network of different university and research institutes as well as companies around the most different processes for the processing of primary and secondary raw materials. Our customers will continue to benefit from this environment and the wide range of possibilities for developing individual solutions for challenging tasks in the field of mechanical process engineering.

In the new pilot plant, all machines from the HAVER & BOECKER NIAGARA product portfolio are available on a pilot scale for design tests and for the customized development of new processes and procedures. „HAVER & BOECKER NIAGARA is the specialist for the development of outstanding process engineering solutions in the field of screening and pelletizing technology,“ emphasizes Florian Festge „With the new HAVER Engineering pilot plant, we offer our customers more extensive possibilities to link the most diverse process engineering processes, to investigate their effects on the product results and subsequently to carry out a technical and economic evaluation of the tests.“

„The unique combination of large-scale testing, subsequent transfer of the results into a flowsheet development and final simulation of the industrial plant with our NIAflow provides our customers with important information at an early stage of the project to optimize their processes and make fact-based investment decisions,“ adds Dr. Metodi Zlatev.

„Above all, flexibility, practicality and rapid implementation of trials or the possibility to test processes on a larger scale“ are decisive arguments for Fred Bohndick, Managing Director of ICB Consulting and a customer from the very beginning, to work with HAVER Engineering in the field of sewage sludge ash granulation. The sewage sludge granulates have a high phosphorus content and can therefore be used as fertilizer in agriculture. They are an important contribution to closing the nutrient cycle.

The embedding in the university environment with the different institutes from processing to iron metallurgy, also convinced international partners of the possibilities of the HAVER & BOECKER Institute. METINVEST and FERREXPO, for example, rely on the company’s know-how for the modernization of their iron ore pelletizing plants. In cooperation with the HAVER & BOECKER NIAGARA Group, FERREXPO and METINVEST were convinced of the efficiency of the NIAGARA SCARABAEUS pelletizing plate with variable sidewall adjustment. Additionally, the extensive test series in the technical center and their integration of the new technology in production increases the efficiency, reduces CO2 emissions and represents an important step towards the production of green steel.