On the 24th, according to the disclosure of Ministry of Land and Resources, after more than ten years of research, Qinghai Lithium Industry continually optimized its technology to solve the technical problem of extracting lithium from high-magnesium lithium salt brine. According to reports, the company adopted ion selective migration of synthetic lithium carbonate technology, with advanced process, high degree of automation, product quality, low cost and cleaner production and other key core technologies reached the international advanced level, high magnesium lithium salt brine Lithium magnesium separation technology as the international initiative.
Driven by the heavy sales of new energy vehicles, the demand for battery grade lithium carbonate surged and the market price soared. In 2015, the price of lithium carbonate rose from 150,000 to 60,000 yuan per tonne to 150,000 yuan. The technological breakthrough in Qinghai Lithium will provide raw material support for the development of China's lithium battery, Salt Lake resources will also get the opportunity to enhance the value.
At present, there are mainly two kinds of processes for producing lithium carbonate. The lithium salt extracted from salt lake and the lithium extracted from ore are 70% extracted from salt brine and about 30% from ore extracted from lithium. Due to the high magnesium-lithium ratio in our country's salt lake, it is difficult to process. The ratio of ore to lithium is 80%, and the ratio of brine extraction is low. High-magnesium lithium salt extraction process than the salt lake is a global problem, limiting the standard lithium salt extraction capacity of enterprises to expand capacity, and often in the by-product of lithium carbonate position, it is difficult to extend the lithium extraction capacity alone.
More than 70% of the world's lithium resources are stored in the salt lake brine of South America and China, while 71% of China's lithium resources exist in the salt lakes of Qinghai and Tibet, in particular, the lithium resources in Qinghai Salt Lake Accounting for more than half of China's lithium reserves. Salt Lake lithium direct products are generally only industrial-grade lithium carbonate, need to go through purification technology can be converted into high-end lithium carbonate products, but the difficulty of conversion and brine elements similar to the separation, and higher conversion costs.
In addition to the Tibet Mining Zabuye Lake in our country, other known magnesia-lithium ratio of salt lake is very high, reaching 50-600: 1, even if the rough processing of old brine, magnesium-lithium ratio is greater than 20: 1, lithium extraction process is complex Technical difficulty is high. Internationally, SQM, FMC and Chemetall have developed salt lakes and magnesia-lithium ratios less than 5: 1. Salt lake is significantly superior to China in its grade, which has led to the fact that most domestic liquefied lithium plants rely on imports.
The Qinghai Lithium achieved from 3,000 tons of lithium carbonate plant, 10,000 tons of production equipment to support the upgrading and renovation and expansion, and to achieve compliance, once off-line product quality lithium-ion battery grade standards. The company's ion-selective migration of synthetic lithium carbonate technology has led to a breakthrough in solving the global challenge of extracting lithium salt from high-magnesium lithium salt lakes and successfully utilizing high-quality lithium carbonate products from the Tajjin Salt Lake resources. At the same time, the production process has achieved zero discharge of "three wastes" and has no high-temperature, high-pressure, flammable and explosive processes in the production process. The safety is high and plays an important supporting role in the development of electric vehicles in China. The agency expects the demand for lithium carbonate in the next five years will maintain a compound annual growth rate of about 20%.