Five Aspects to Help the Development of Rare Earth Industry

Recently, Wang Jiangping, deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, led a team to Longyan City in Fujian Province and Chenzhou City in Jiangxi Province to investigate the development of the rare earth industry.

Wang Jiangping pointed out that it is necessary to focus on five aspects of work to achieve high quality, green and sustainable development of the rare earth industry:

1.Adhere to green development, and ultimately achieve the purpose of improving resource utilization.

2.Improve technical specifications, including technical specifications for mining, smelting separation and resource recovery, and also establish mining and smelting separation demonstration plants.

3.Promote the development and application of new rare earth materials. This requires: at the provincial level, the construction of rare earth functional materials testing platform and application platform; and at the national level, the construction of rare earth related integrated circuit material production and application demonstration platform.

4.Build a refined management mechanism for the rare earth industry. Focus on refining the index management system for light rare earths and medium and heavy rare earths, and expanding the functional application of surplus elements such as antimony and antimony.

5.Standardize the mining of rare earth mines and improve the management mechanism of local crushing and recycling projects.

As we all know, rare earth is an important strategic resource. From the perspective of overall reserves, it is not scarce. Rare earths have unique properties such as light, electricity, magnetism and heat, and thus have been widely used in the industrial field. So far, China is still the country with the richest rare earths in the world. 98% of the rare earth resources are distributed in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, Longyan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan Liangshan, Shandong, and Baotou, Inner Mongolia, with “South Heavy and Light”. Distribution characteristics. Why is China's rare earth distribution showing “south heavy north and light”?

First, let's first understand what is light rare earth, medium rare earth and heavy rare earth? Rare earths can be classified into light rare earths, medium rare earths and heavy rare earths by extraction separation. Light rare earth (P204 weak acid extraction) contains lanthanum, cerium, lanthanum, cerium; medium rare earth (P204 low acidity extraction) contains lanthanum, cerium, lanthanum, cerium and lanthanum; heavy rare earth (acid extraction in P204) contains lanthanum, cerium, lanthanum.

It is said that China's rare earth resources are generally characterized by “south heavy north and light” because the southern provinces mainly produce heavy rare earths, while the north mainly produces light rare earths. Among them, the heavy rare earth deposits in the south are relatively scattered, mainly ion-adsorbed ore-type mines, mainly distributed in Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, Guangxi and other provinces, and their reserves account for about 90% of China's heavy rare earth resources. In the north, it is represented by the Baiyun Obo Mine in Baotou, which mainly produces light rare earth, and its reserves exceed 80% of the country.

It must be said that medium and heavy rare earths are indispensable elements in the high-tech field. Rare earth is used in high-tech new materials mainly for the preparation of rare earth permanent magnet materials, hydrogen storage materials, catalytic materials, polishing materials and luminescent materials. Rare earth permanent magnet materials are mainly used in high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy vehicles, new energy, high-performance medical equipment and other fields. Rare earth hydrogen storage materials have broad application prospects in high-performance power batteries, large-scale energy storage devices, and heat storage materials for solar power generation. The rare earth catalytic materials have great market space in the fields of power plant denigration such as power plants, vehicle exhaust gas purification, and volatile organic compound treatment. With the improvement of environmental protection requirements, the application of rare earth as a catalytic material will be more extensive.

Finally, what the author wants to say is that China is ranked first in the world in terms of proven rare earth reserves and production, and has assumed the bulk of the world's rare earth supply in the past few decades. But as a result, China has paid a huge price – environmental pollution and resource consumption. Fortunately, with the strengthening of environmental awareness in recent years, the implementation of environmental protection policies and the gradual integration of domestic rare earth resources, the supply and demand pattern of rare earths is changing.

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