Что фактически перемещается
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.
- Материал
- Nickel
- Разновидность
- Limonite laterite, roughly 1.3% nickel, with recoverable cobalt
- Начальная точка
- Indonesia — Sulawesi and Halmahera
Шаг за шагом, граница за границей
Indonesia · Sulawesi хранится у Indonesian miners and joint ventures (Горнодобывающая компания)
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.
Почему именно здесь: Same weathering process as New Caledonia, different layer of the same profile.
Indonesia · HPAL plant, Morowali or Obi хранится у Plant operators (Химический)
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.
Что произошло с остатком: The acid is made on site from sulfur, most of it imported. A nickel plant is quietly also a very large chemical plant.
Почему именно здесь: 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 хранится у Plant operators (Химический)
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.
Почему именно здесь: MHP exists purely to solve a freight problem: you cannot ship a tank of pregnant leach solution across an ocean.
China · Chinese refineries хранится у Refiners (Рафинировщик)
To a refinery
MHP is containerised and shipped to be redissolved and separated into individual metal salts.
Почему именно здесь: Sulfate refining and cathode precursor manufacture are co-located; the intermediate goes to where both already exist.
China · Precursor and cathode plants хранится у Chemical and cathode makers (Производитель)
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.
Почему именно здесь: Precursor chemistry is the least visible and most concentrated step in the entire battery chain.
China · Cell and vehicle plants хранится у Battery and vehicle manufacturers (Производитель)
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.
Почему именно здесь: From a hillside in Sulawesi to a car park, in about five months.
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.