Technology Centre
Leading research centre
Our Technology Centre is one of the most advanced mineral agglomeration research facilities in the world.
We have invested £8 million in sophisticated testing facilities, enabling us to derisk our processes and ensure the optimal performance of our Cold Agglomerated Pellets (CAPs). Using our range of equipment, we are able to work with a wide variety of ores and to simulate conditions in all types of production furnaces. In November 2024, we completed an upgrade to our R&D capabilities, expanding our research, technical support, and product testing services enabling us to significantly reduce development timelines. Additionally, new hot testing equipment at our Technology Centre now simulates conditions in direct reduction plants and blast furnaces, ensuring our CAPs meet key ISO standards and customer requirements. This enables us to accelerate testing programs.
Our Technical Team is comprised of experts in Hydrogen reduction processes, iron ore reduction chemistry, mineral agglomeration, as well as material characterisation and process optimisation. We continue to draw upon the enormous pool of technical talent which exists on Teesside to support the development of BSL’s Cold Agglomeration technology.
Technology Centre process
The BSL Technology Centre provides a full life cycle testing facility for our clients. We meticulously assess and characterise the wide variety of ores clients supply to determine the optimal agglomeration system. Thereafter, we test the performance of the CAPs we create at increasing scale throughout laboratory and pilot plant phases proceeding to full furnace trials with our partners.
The Technology centre comprises:
Development laboratory
An advanced laboratory where we undertake fundamental scientific research in agglomeration and furnace operations to continuously improve our technology and develop new products. We also work with our global iron ore and steel customers to produce tailored binder system to solve their challenges.
Pilot plant
Our sophisticated pilot plant can produce up to two tonnes of CAPs per hour for large scale furnace trials and derisk the commercial scale up of technology.