The XXIV IMPC (International Mineral Processing Congress) which took place in Beijing from September 23 to 28, 2008 gave an opportunity to see the important development in Iron Ore processing worldwide, especially in China. This review paper presents: A brief history of the IMPC Congresses as well as the scope of this XXIV IMPC in Beijing; The development of the Iron Ore demand and supply of the Chinese Iron and Steel Industry and the consequences on Iron Ore imports; The impressive expansion of the Iron Ore mining and processing in China.

The technical requirements applied for the scheme installed at ArcelorMittal Tubarão for automatic separation of the utility electrical systems are presented. The criteria adopted for the settings of the electrical protections that compose the philosophy of the grid separation scheme are treated as well. Historical results and real cases are used to evaluate the system performance.

The MRS-100 system combines at the same time the simplicity of a linear sliding gate and the advantages of a round plate. This sliding gate is based on 3 innovating approaches: a sliding gate built around a refractory plate, a mechanism that avoids the cracking of plates and finally, an optimisation of the round plate through a programmable sequential rotation at the ladle stand. This MRS-100 system leads to a safe use, an improvement of the tasks at the working station and a reduction of the user costs.

The principle of mass flow AGC of tandem cold mill as well as advanced mass flow AGC are introduced and analyzed. Based on advanced mass flow AGC, the effect of laser velocimeters to jointly control strip's thickness is analyzed. On the basis of the advanced mass flow AGC system of tandem cold mill in Baosteel, the characteristics and merits of advanced mass flow AGC in application of laser velocimeters are analyzed in detail.

The paper presents the new Mo free duplex stainless steel UR2202 (EN 1.4062) developed to provide a cost effective alternative to 304L (EN 1.4307), concrete, organic materials or galvanized carbon steel in potable water systems, pulp & paper industry and construction applications. The reduction of Ni is balanced by a nitrogen addition in order to obtain a microstructure containing approximately 50% ferrite and 50% austenite. Several industrial heats were produced with 22Cr%, 2Ni% and 0.2N% as the typical composition. The new lean duplex grade UR2202 has better localized and uniform corrosion resistance and twice the yield strength than 304L.

The equivalent fatigue approach is a method for transforming complicated loadings into simpler ones, equivalent in terms of damage, without information about the geometry of the structure. It has been used for the design specifications of metallic structures, for the conditions of their tests trials, and finally for the characterization of customers and markets. The case of the one input equivalent fatigue approach has been thoroughly investigated at PSA. The current work treats the extension of the equivalent fatigue approach to the case of multi-input loadings. Especially the aim of this paper is to develop Markov chain models for the equivalent fatigue loadings.