Chinese R&D team in tungsten carbide has a breakthrough in the research and development of high-performance tungsten carbide composite material, it mainly includes:

1. Phase controlled particle size adjustable nano WC-Co composite powder scale preparation techniques: It takes tungsten-cobalt oxide and carbon as raw material, and uses solid-phase synthesis in-situ reaction to synthesize ultrafine or nano WC-Co composite powder. It has many advantages, such as simple operation, short process, Low-cost equipment, energy saving and so on. The synthesis of composite powder has high purity, low oxygen content, Co content within a wide range of 6-20wt% is accurate and adjustable, which reached on the current international quality ultrafine nano WC-based powder control standards.

2. High liquidity, nano-structure WC-based spraying powder scale preparation techniques: It based on the principle of spray-drying and combines with heat treatment, which not only maintains the characteristics of nano structure, but also can fabricate the thermal spray powder with high fluidity. So it gets to the root of nano powder thermal spraying at high temperature flame flow easily decomposed decarbonization, which is a difficulty in international technical fields.

3. High density, high surface quality and technical preparation of carbide wear and corrosion coating: The technology synergistically adjust the initial powder component, thermal spray granulation and agglomeration process, by a combination of carbon content design, unique heat treatment process, recombinant size, thermal spraying process parameters optimization to fabricate high-performance nano-structure carbide coating. The coating having a porosity of <0.5% of a high density; compared with the conventional micro structure, the surface quality has significantly improved, the surface roughness Ra <0.5m.

4. Ultrafine size nano-crystalline tungsten carbide block preparation: The technology develops a low-temperature region slow heating rate, low pressure, high temperature rapid heating region segmentation, greater pressure, does not heat the unique field effect sintering process. And produces nano tungsten carbide block with average grain size of 60-100nm. The average grain size of 60nm dense nano-crystalline alloy is the smallest grain size reported so far around the world. Meanwhile, nano-crystalline tungsten carbide sintered material can meet the requirements of high hardness and high fracture toughness.

China tungsten carbide industry has 60 years of development history, which has been regarded as a big country of carbide. According to carbide branch of CTIA (China Tungsten Industry Association) statistics, the last three years (2012-2014) of the annual output of domestic carbide 2.2-2.5 million tons, which more than 40% of global output. Although the production and consumption of tungsten carbide of our country is at the leading place around the world, as far as the level of manufacture and technology, we still fall behind. In terms of the plateau of domestic tungsten carbide industries development, we developed many research projects and establish a special carbide R&D team, after more than ten years of basic research and technology development to study ultra-fine carbide nano-scale manufacturing equipment and engineering application of a series of new technologies, and work closely with companies to develop over carbide materials and high value-added products toward high-end applications development.

For WC-based tungsten carbide, compared with conventional coarse grain (the average grain size about 13μm), tungsten carbide with ultrafine grain (the average grain size about 200-500nm) and nano grain (the average grain size lower than 200nm) has high hardness, high strength, high fracture strength and excellent wear and corrosion resistance, which becomes the indispensable material for drilling, cutting and milling process. Since late 1990s, nano tungsten carbide has been emerged many new processes. In recent years, ultra-fine carbide and nano-scale preparation and industrial applications become international attention, reflecting the forefront of competitive research focus, which experienced a period of many preparation methods of nano carbide change of evolution. Such as sol - gel / co-precipitation method, a plasma method, but they are limited to use in nano WC powder synthetise in laboratory; spark plasma sintering, high pressure and so consolidation is limited to the preparation laboratory simple shape and small three-dimensional nano-polycrystalline material; Complex spray conversion method steps, the high cost of the process, demanding precision control, which greatly limits the technology in the manufacture of nano-WC-based powder application.

Ganzhou Tungsten Industry Association yesterday announced the March 2016 market forecast average price of tungsten: tungsten concentrate 75,000 RMB/ton, APT 105,000.00 RMB/ton, middle size tungsten powder 168 RMB/kg. Compared to February, the price of tungsten concentrates unchanged, but APT raised 2,000 RMB for each ton and the middle size of tungsten powder raised 4 RMB for each kg. This showed Ganzhou Tungsten Industry Association has optimistic attitude about the spring tungsten market.

Following Minmetals tungsten market guide price published in May, now re-released new tungsten market guidance in June, including tungsten concentrate 75,000/ton, scheelite 74,000/ton. Compared with the May guidance, the chain relative ratio were down 3,000 for each ton. And difference with May, this time Minmetals guide price of tungsten concentrate is similar to Ganzhou Tungsten Association tungsten concentrate forecast average price. Minmetals tungsten market guide price can be slightly higher than recent market transaction price, also showed Minmetals willingness to stabilize tungsten market.

The manufacturers of raw materials has optimistic attitude about tungsten market, so they reluctant to sale raw material and want to increase the price, but affected by low tungsten finished products demand the price acceptance is low and the turnover is limited. But supported by supply-side reform, mainly China domestic mining enterprises to suspend shipments, based on the policy is expected to continue to bring some benefit, so in the short-term the price of tungsten is difficult to fall down and will slight increase. 65% tungsten concentrate purchase price is not less than 75,000 RMB/ton and APT purchase price is not less than 115,000.00 RMB/ton. Besides, the market is still upside.

China's economic is gradually recovery, but tungsten finished products industry demand is shrinking, and the industry has been going on downturn for a long time. The end of January this year, eight large tungsten enterprises of China met in Chaozhou decided in 2016 tungsten concentrate reduction of output more than 15%. Reduced supply is good for industry rebound.