Что фактически перемещается
Heavy rare earths do not come from a conventional orebody. They come from weathered granite where the metal ions cling loosely to clay, and they are recovered by washing a salt solution through the hillside. The grade is tiny; the strategic weight is enormous.
- Материал
- Dysprosium
- Разновидность
- Ion-adsorption clay, very low grade, unusually rich in heavy rare earths
- Начальная точка
- China — Weathered granite hills in Jiangxi, Guangdong and Fujian
Шаг за шагом, граница за границей
China · Jiangxi and Guangdong хранится у State-consolidated producers (Государственный производитель)
Leaching the hill in place
Ammonium sulfate solution is injected into the weathered granite and collected downslope. The rare-earth ions swap places with ammonium on the clay and come out in solution. Nothing is blasted and, in modern practice, little is dug.
Что произошло с остатком: Older, uncontrolled in-situ leaching left serious groundwater and slope-stability damage, which is much of why the industry was consolidated under state control.
Почему именно здесь: This deposit type needs a specific granite, a specific climate and millions of years. It is not a matter of looking harder elsewhere.
China · On site хранится у Producers (Химический)
Precipitating a mixed carbonate
The pregnant solution is precipitated into a mixed rare-earth carbonate — the intermediate everything downstream starts from.
Почему именно здесь: Concentrating before transport, as always.
China · Ganzhou, Jiangxi хранится у China Rare Earth Group and affiliates (Рафинировщик)
Separating the heavies
Solvent extraction, but far harder than for the light rare earths: dysprosium, terbium, holmium and erbium are even more alike than neodymium and praseodymium, so it takes more stages and more patience.
Что произошло с остатком: Terbium, yttrium, gadolinium and the rest come out alongside. Yttrium is by far the largest fraction; dysprosium and terbium are the ones everyone actually wants.
Почему именно здесь: Heavy separation capacity is concentrated here to a degree unmatched by any other material in this atlas.
China · Magnet plants хранится у Magnet manufacturers (Производитель)
Diffused into a magnet's grain boundaries
Rather than alloying dysprosium throughout the magnet, it is painted on and diffused into the grain boundaries where it does the most good. The technique cut dysprosium use per magnet several-fold.
Что произошло с остатком: This is substitution by engineering rather than by chemistry — same performance, a fraction of the scarce element.
Почему именно здесь: Grain-boundary diffusion is a process advantage held by a small number of manufacturers.
Germany · Traction motors and turbines хранится у Motor manufacturers (Производитель)
A motor that can get hot
Without dysprosium a neodymium magnet begins losing strength around 80 °C. A traction motor or a turbine nacelle routinely runs hotter than that. 15 kg is enough for several thousand car motors.
Почему именно здесь: A few kilograms of a metal from a Chinese hillside is what lets an electric motor survive a summer traffic jam.
Это разработанный пример. Он прослеживает заявленное исходное количество материала через типовые опубликованные выходы и коэффициенты извлечения, поэтому соотношения поддаются проверке; это не запись о конкретной отгрузке. Данные о маршруте — какие страны, какие процессы и почему материал не может быть переработан в другом месте — собраны из общедоступных источников.