Cosa si muove effettivamente
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.
- Il materiale
- Nickel
- La varietà
- Limonite laterite, roughly 1.3% nickel, with recoverable cobalt
- Dove inizia
- Indonesia — Sulawesi and Halmahera
Passo dopo passo, confine per confine
Indonesia · Sulawesi detenuto da Indonesian miners and joint ventures (Minatore)
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.
Perché qui: Same weathering process as New Caledonia, different layer of the same profile.
Indonesia · HPAL plant, Morowali or Obi detenuto da Plant operators (Chimico)
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.
Che fine ha fatto il resto: The acid is made on site from sulfur, most of it imported. A nickel plant is quietly also a very large chemical plant.
Perché qui: 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 detenuto da Plant operators (Chimico)
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.
Perché qui: MHP exists purely to solve a freight problem: you cannot ship a tank of pregnant leach solution across an ocean.
China · Chinese refineries detenuto da Refiners (Raffinatore)
To a refinery
MHP is containerised and shipped to be redissolved and separated into individual metal salts.
Perché qui: Sulfate refining and cathode precursor manufacture are co-located; the intermediate goes to where both already exist.
China · Precursor and cathode plants detenuto da Chemical and cathode makers (Produttore)
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.
Perché qui: Precursor chemistry is the least visible and most concentrated step in the entire battery chain.
China · Cell and vehicle plants detenuto da Battery and vehicle manufacturers (Produttore)
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.
Perché qui: From a hillside in Sulawesi to a car park, in about five months.
Questo è un esempio elaborato. Segue una quantità iniziale dichiarata attraverso rese e recuperi tipici pubblicati, così che le proporzioni siano verificabili; non è il resoconto di una spedizione specifica. I dati di percorso — quali paesi, quali processi e perché il materiale non può semplicemente essere trattato altrove — sono compilati da fonti di pubblico dominio.