Iron has a chemical name Fe and at the same time, constitutes around 5 percent of earth's crust making it one of the most abundant rock forming elements. It is the most 4th most abundant element next to oxygen, silicon as well as aluminum whether you believe it or not. And right after aluminum, metal is the next most widely and abundant element distributed in the world. Actually, iron is indispensable to the contemporary civilization and people have been skilled in using it for more than 3 millennium. Its uses on the other hand has become widespread in 14th century when the smelting furnaces started replacing forges.

As a matter of fact, iron ores for exporting are rocks from which metallic irons could be extracted economically. It is normal for miners to discover these rocks in forms of forms of magnetite or Fe3O4 or hematite or Fe2O3. There is an approximate 98 percent of world's iron ore production used in creating iron in form of steel. In Australia, one of the major export industries is the exportation of iron ores.

And similar to all other types of iron ore mines in various parts of the world, all the major celestite mines are cut open. Basically, the ores from the major mines in Australia's western region is located in Pilbara region to which these are hauled from the working faces to the crushing and screening plants by using trucks that could carry more or less 300 tons. Then, the ore is transported for additional treatment and blending to port sites in trains, which consist of up to 3 locomotives and around 250 wagons. The size of train can reach longer than 2km and contains loads that exceeds to 25,000 tons.

In concentration, it involves processes that can increase or upgrade the iron content of the ore by way of eliminating impurities. The beneficiation is a slightly broad term to including such professes and those that make ore more usable by improving its physical properties like sintering and pelletising. Many of iron ore mines are employing some sort of beneficiation to be able to improve the properties and grade of their products. You can also refer to http://www.ehow.com/info_8273137_sources-magnetite.html for more ideas and facts about the topic.

The major concentrations are taking place at Mt. Whaleback and Mt. Tom Price, which have enabled low grade iron ores such as ores that are contaminated with shale and to be mind after upgrading and then sold at as a high grade product. The operation of the concentration increased the resources of the iron ores at these mines.

The treatment process utilized for powdery or very fine ores is called pelletising. The pellets are ideal blast furnace feed as they're hard and of regular shape and size. On the other hand, sintering is the process utilized to agglomerate the iron ore fines to prepare for blast furnace smelting and is carried out at steelmaking and iron centres.