Resources development status of boron in China

Although Chinese boron resources is abundant, boron products is far from being able to meet the demand of Chinese economic development. According to 2007 statistics, Chinese boron production is 145,000 tons, the borax production is about 400,000 tons, 648,700 tons of imported boron products, a huge gap between supply and demand. Especially through many years of constantly mining, the rich ore of boron resources mining has been exhausted, and resources toward taste depleted resources depleted stage. Chinese boron industry take advantage of the ore szaibelyite borax and boric acid as raw materials to produce low-grade boron resources, such as boron, magnesium, iron boron content in the ore is low, a lot of impurities, and most have not yet been developed and utilized .

The world's boron resources are abundant, but not many countries with boron resources, according to the 2008 statistics show that the world boron reserves is about 170 million tons, about 410 million tons of reserve base, Turkey, Russia, the United States and China. The country's reserves account for about 97% of the world's total reserves. Chinese reserves and reserve base is respectively 25 million tons and 47 million tons, accounting for 14.7% and 11.5%, in the fourth place in the world.

Currently for Separation of paigeite mainly have the following aspects: the conventional separation process, the wet separation process, pyrometallurgical separation process. Conventional separation process is the nature of the ore using conventional beneficiation process for re-election, magnetic separation, flotation and other minerals for sorting in boron material.

Wet separation process mainly deal with the boron-containing iron ore concentrate the magnetic separation process, using acid leaching extraction of boron, the leaching residue of iron ore concentrate by magnetic to make ferroboron separate. The characteristics of wet separation process is to be fully utilized in each of the elements in the ore, boron thorough separation of iron, high acid consumption, high production costs, process waste water difficult to be disposed, environmental issues are difficult to resolve.

In contrast to wet separation process, pyrometallurgical separation process is firstly ironmaking then the boron, the process is divided into the blast furnace method and solid phase reduction - melt separation. The scientists based on the chemistry of ludwigite, the mineral structure characteristics, come up with the furnace method to comprehensive development ludwigite process, first through beneficiation to get boron-containing iron ore concentrate, in 13m blast furnace to do the iron boron separation test, handled a total of ore 8,000 tons, produce borax, boric acid, boron-containing pig iron and a water magnesium sulfate products. Solid phase reduction - melting separation method is ore of ludwigite or after tailing out processing ludwigite, use non coking coal in the solid state at about 1100  reduce 80% to 90% of iron oxide to metallic iron. The ore after restored through magnetic to get magnetic products which containing iron metal and boron oxide slag, and then by electric furnace melting separation, get the boron-containing iron or boron-half steel and high activity of boron-rich slag, the recovery of iron and oxidative boron was greater than 95%; according to the surveys by metal powder supplier boron-containing iron used in the fields of machinery, metallurgy, chemicals, building materials, agricultural and so on, can replace the high prices of boron-iron alloy, chromium, molybdenum, nickel metal. More than 20% of boron oxide content in the boron-rich slag can be used to produce boric acid and borax.

Source:http://www.mhcmp.com