It has been bothering me why in all the recent articles Noront states it needs a deal for power for their electric arc furnaces when KWG has the answer to cost and power savings in their direct reduction patent with NG.

Very recently a study was published by Canmet on.....

Article
Direct Production of Ferrochrome by Segregation
Reduction of Chromite in the Presence of
Calcium Chloride

Dawei Yu * ID and Dogan Paktunc * ID
CanmetMINING, Natural Resources Canada, 555 Booth Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0G1, Canada
* Correspondence: dawei.yu@hotmail.com (D.Y.); dogan.paktunc@canada.ca (D.P.);
Tel.: +1-613-947-8024 (D.Y.); +1-613-947-7061 (D.P.)
Received: 20 December 2017; Accepted: 16 January 2018; Published: 19 January 2018

Abstract: A solid reduction process is described whereby chromite is reduced with the help of
calcium chloride to produce ferrochrome alloy powders with high metal recovery. The process
involves segregation reduction of chromite using graphite as the reductant and calcium chloride as
the segregation catalyst. Experiments were performed in the temperature range of 1200–1400 C to
evaluate the influences of various design parameters using both a thermogravimetric analyzer and an electric tube furnace with continuous off-gas analysis. The reduced products were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy, and were subjected to wet chemical analysis. It was concluded that the addition of calcium chloride not only accelerated the carbothermic reduction of chromite but also promoted the formation and growth of individual ferrochrome alloy particles......

Pure ferrochrome alloy powders were successfully produced with high metal recovery
using elutriating separation.

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KWG supplied the chromite for this testing.  I am not a scientist or geologist so I am wondering is this another way of producing ferrochrome by direct reduction that uses an electric arc furnace that provides a substantial savings of energy to compete with KWG's process?

Hoping Hoov has a look at this and can shed some light on this?

There is no link as clicking on the google find just downloads a pdf of the study.  Copy and paste this into google to see the PDF link....

Direct Production of Ferrochrome by Segregation
Reduction of Chromite in the Presence of
Calcium Chloride