Wat er werkelijk wordt vervoerd
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.
- Het materiaal
- Nickel
- De variëteit
- Limonite laterite, roughly 1.3% nickel, with recoverable cobalt
- Waar het begint
- Indonesia — Sulawesi and Halmahera
Stap voor stap, en grens voor grens
Indonesia · Sulawesi in beheer bij Indonesian miners and joint ventures (Mijnbouwer)
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.
Waarom hier: Same weathering process as New Caledonia, different layer of the same profile.
Indonesia · HPAL plant, Morowali or Obi in beheer bij 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.
Wat er met de rest gebeurde: The acid is made on site from sulfur, most of it imported. A nickel plant is quietly also a very large chemical plant.
Waarom 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 in beheer bij 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.
Waarom hier: MHP exists purely to solve a freight problem: you cannot ship a tank of pregnant leach solution across an ocean.
China · Chinese refineries in beheer bij Refiners (Raffinaderij)
To a refinery
MHP is containerised and shipped to be redissolved and separated into individual metal salts.
Waarom hier: Sulfate refining and cathode precursor manufacture are co-located; the intermediate goes to where both already exist.
China · Precursor and cathode plants in beheer bij Chemical and cathode makers (Fabrikant)
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.
Waarom hier: Precursor chemistry is the least visible and most concentrated step in the entire battery chain.
China · Cell and vehicle plants in beheer bij Battery and vehicle manufacturers (Fabrikant)
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.
Waarom hier: From a hillside in Sulawesi to a car park, in about five months.
Dit is een uitgewerkt voorbeeld. Het volgt een opgegeven beginhoeveelheid door gepubliceerde typische opbrengsten en rendementen, zodat de verhoudingen controleerbaar zijn; het is geen verslag van een concrete zending. Routefeiten — welke landen, welke processen, en waarom het materiaal niet zomaar elders kan worden verwerkt — zijn samengesteld uit openbare bronnen.