Was tatsächlich transportiert wird
Indonesia forbade the export of unprocessed nickel ore, forcing anyone who wanted the metal to build a plant on Indonesian soil. Within a decade the country went from an ore supplier to the dominant producer of processed nickel, and the upper limonite layer that used to be waste became battery feedstock.
- Das Material
- Nickel
- Die Varietät
- Limonite laterite, roughly 1.3% nickel, with recoverable cobalt
- Wo es beginnt
- Indonesia — Sulawesi and Halmahera
Schritt für Schritt und Grenze für Grenze
Indonesia · Sulawesi gehalten von Indonesian miners and joint ventures (Bergmann)
Skimming the top of the profile
The limonite layer sits above the saprolite. It used to be stripped off and dumped to reach the higher-grade ore below; now it is the product.
Warum hier: Same weathering process as New Caledonia, different layer of the same profile.
Indonesia · HPAL plant, Morowali or Obi gehalten von Plant operators (Chemisch)
Dissolving it under pressure
Slurried ore goes into an autoclave with sulfuric acid at about 250 °C and 40 bar. Nickel and cobalt dissolve; iron stays behind as a residue.
Was mit dem Rest geschah: The acid is made on site from sulfur, most of it imported. A nickel plant is quietly also a very large chemical plant.
Warum hier: Because the ore export ban means it has to be. This industry exists in Indonesia by policy as much as by geology.
Indonesia · Same complex gehalten von Plant operators (Chemisch)
Precipitating a shippable intermediate
Nickel and cobalt are precipitated together as mixed hydroxide precipitate — MHP — a green-grey filter cake that is compact enough to ship economically.
Warum hier: MHP exists purely to solve a freight problem: you cannot ship a tank of pregnant leach solution across an ocean.
China · Chinese refineries gehalten von Refiners (Raffineriebetreiber)
To a refinery
MHP is containerised and shipped to be redissolved and separated into individual metal salts.
Warum hier: Sulfate refining and cathode precursor manufacture are co-located; the intermediate goes to where both already exist.
China · Precursor and cathode plants gehalten von Chemical and cathode makers (Hersteller)
Sulfate, precursor, cathode
Redissolved and crystallised into nickel sulfate and cobalt sulfate, co-precipitated with manganese into a mixed hydroxide precursor, then lithiated and calcined into cathode powder.
Warum hier: Precursor chemistry is the least visible and most concentrated step in the entire battery chain.
China · Cell and vehicle plants gehalten von Battery and vehicle manufacturers (Hersteller)
Roughly 220 electric cars
At around 50 kg of nickel per high-nickel pack, 11 tonnes of contained nickel is on the order of two hundred cars.
Warum hier: From a hillside in Sulawesi to a car park, in about five months.
Dies ist ein ausgearbeitetes Beispiel. Es verfolgt eine angegebene Ausgangsmenge anhand veröffentlichter typischer Ausbeuten und Ausbringungsgrade, sodass die Verhältnisse nachprüfbar sind; es handelt sich nicht um den Nachweis einer bestimmten Lieferung. Routenfakten — welche Länder, welche Prozesse und warum das Material nicht einfach anderswo verarbeitet werden kann — sind aus öffentlichen Berichten zusammengestellt.