Rio Tinto Iron Ore

RTIO lays out its business practice statement in a document titled, The Way We Work (Rio Tinto Iron Ore, n.d. all subsequent quotations are from that document, unless otherwise indicated). The company asserts Wherever we operate, we do our best to accommodate the different cultures, lifestyles, heritage and preferences of our neighbors, particularly in areas where industrial development is little known. Our communities and... 

The formation of the chlorides is effected in the dry way by calcination with sodium chloride or in the wet way by interaction with ferrous chloride and hydrochloric acid or with ferric chloride. The wet way is only adopted if fuel is scarce, or the escape of noxious vapours into the atmosphere is not permissible. In the dry method the ore is oxidized by a preliminary roasting, and then chloridized by calcination with sodium chloride or Abraum salts in a furnace of the reverberatory or muffle type, the principal product being cupric chloride. The Dotsch modification of the wet process, worked at Rio Tinto, depends on the action of ferric-chloride solution on a mixture of the ore with sodium sulphate and ferric chloride. The liquid drawn off from the bottom of the heaps of ore contains cuprous chloride in solution as a complex salt. The copper is liberated by the action of iron, the ferrous chloride simultaneously formed being chlorinated in towers to ferric chloride, and the product employed for moistening the heaps of ore. 

Rio Tinto Zinc. This is primarily a mining company and its chemical interests relate largely to the ores which it mines. It is therefore concerned with inorganic compounds of metals like copper, aluminium, iron, lead and zinc. The takeover of Borax Consolidated in 1968 took it into the area of boron compounds. 

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