Hand rubbing nuclear fusion live in the wilderness

Chapter 375 Efficient Flotation of Ore

Returning to the aircraft with kaolin on his back, Han Yuan watched the barrage while walking.

"What I found this time is a weathering crust elution-type rare earth ore, which is an ion-adsorption rare earth ore. It contains heavy rare metals such as strontium, ytterbium, and yttrium, which are exactly what I lack."

"After the discovery of this rare earth mine, except for some rare metal elements with serious radiation, such as uranium, radium, plutonium and other rare metal elements, other rare metals have basically been collected."

"After returning to Mount Tai, I will make a preliminary selection of the rare earth ores collected before, and then transport them back to the base for smelting."

"I won't say much about the importance of rare metals, whether they are used in the manufacture of special steels, superhard alloys and high-temperature resistant alloys, or in the electrical industry, chemical industry, ceramics industry, atomic energy industry and rocket technology. major."

"And those rare metals with radioactivity can launch fission reactions, and then release a lot of energy, which can be used in power generation, nuclear weapon manufacturing and other fields."

"Of course, it is also because these metals are highly reflective. I can't mine them now. I have to prepare corresponding protective clothing to mine them."

Han Yuan briefly explained the next work arrangement and plan, and then continued to transport rare earths.

Although this weathering crust elution-type rare earth mine contains a large amount of rare metal elements and is a natural concentrate, but to extract enough rare metals from the ore soil, the amount of rare earth required is also calculated in tons.

As for those radioactive rare metals, he plans to deal with them after returning to the Amazon rainforest.

Huaguo is a country with depleted uranium. Although there are more than 200 proven large and small uranium mines in the country, the amount that can be mined is actually quite small.

This is also one of the reasons for the slow development of Huaguo nuclear power. More than 80.00% of the uranium ore needs to be imported, and the lifeblood is in the hands of others. How can it develop?

This time, Han Yuan wanted to use the metal ore detector to find various metal ores in the territory, including uranium ore, but the final result was not satisfactory.

The amount of uranium ore is indeed scarce.

He wandered around Inner Mongolia for half a circle, and found two uranium mines, one big and one small.

Moreover, neither of them is rich ore, and the combined output is less than [-] tons. The high-concentration uranium that can be extracted from the middle may only be a few hundred kilograms, which shows that uranium resources are indeed scarce.

It would be best if he could find a few large uranium mines by the way, but it doesn't matter if he can't find them. After all, he didn't come here specifically to find uranium mines.

This time he found some things that are more scarce in the country in the mining area of ​​Inner Mongolia.

Chromium, copper, and nickel are three metals that are scarce in China and are imported in large quantities every year. He found several large veins near the Baiyun Obo mining area, and marked them.

These ore veins are all buried relatively deep, but if they can be developed, they can greatly alleviate the needs of Huaguo.

Of course, after these ore veins are discovered, they may also be sealed up as reserve mines for backup.

Won doesn't care about these things, it is enough for him to name these veins, how to use them is a matter of the above.

In fact, in his opinion, the best way is to learn from the United States and small island countries. The resources discovered in one's own country should be sealed up as a backup, and then large quantities of resources from other countries should be purchased.

Just like rare earths, is there really no rare earth mines in the United States?
it has!

Although the output is not as high as Huaguo, if you develop your own, there is no problem in being self-sufficient.

But the United States still chose to import rare earths from China and seal up its own rare earth mines.

This kind of strategic level non-renewable resource needs to be mined less, and no matter how much it is produced, it will always be used up one day.

However, it is unknown how long it will take for humans to go into space and be able to mine the veins on alien planets or meteorites.

Even if it is possible to mine asteroids or capture meteorites, I am afraid that the cost of mining on them and transporting them back to the earth will far exceed the cost of mining on the earth itself.

So at present, at least for a hundred years, or even 200 years, the earth will be the only cradle of mankind.

Although the emergence of the Korean won will accelerate the pace of human beings going into space to a certain extent, it will take at least a hundred years for human civilization to transform from a civilization on the home planet to a civilization in space.

This is not an easy task.

Therefore, the later the time, the more serious the dependence on various rare metals, and the more frequent the competition for various resources.

After going back and forth several times, Han Yuan finally collected enough rare earths from this weathering crust elution-type rare earth mine.

After bidding farewell to those few wild giant pandas, the aircraft set sail again and returned to Mount Tai.

The collected rare earth ores are piled up in different places by the river according to different mining areas, piled up like hills.

Han Won counted the rare earth mines collected before and after, and confirmed the types of rare metals contained in them.

He was not disappointed when he returned to Huaguo this time. The rare metals collected from the two large rare earth mines in Baiyun Obo and Chuandu are quite complete.

Strontium, ytterbium, yttrium, beryllium, vanadium, tantalum, niobium, etc., plus those in the Amazon rainforest, he has collected more than half of the rare metals.

Won did some calculations. Among the rare metals, although he is still quite poor, they are all rubidium, radium, uranium, plutonium, actinium, thorium, protactinium, etc., which are basically radioactive rare metals.

It's not that there are no such things in Huaguo, but that he can't mine them for the time being.

Radioactive rare metals have a certain degree of radioactivity after mineralization. Although the original ore is not as strong as the rare metal after refining, the damage to the human body is not great in a short period of time, but the hazards to human health in these mining areas are not limited to radioactivity.

In addition to radioactivity, there are various harmful substances born from the decay of radioactive materials.

For example, radon gas, uranium will produce radium-226 during the decay process, and radon gas is a direct product of radium-226.

Although the half-life of radon is only 3.8235 days, it is extremely harmful. Once the human body inhales radon gas beyond the standard, it will inevitably cause a series of health problems.

Therefore, the South Korean won will not mine these rare metals with a lot of reflectivity without adequate protective preparations.

In fact, even when mining ordinary rare metal mines, he actually took certain precautions.

Including clothes, gloves, masks, these things are complete.

After counting the rare earth and rare metal mines in front of him, Han Yuan thought and calculated the smelting methods of these rare metals.

Different types of rare metals and even corresponding rare earth or rare metal ores have different smelting methods.

For example, weathering crust elution-type rare earth ores, this kind of ion-adsorbed rare earths, are useless to ordinary smelting methods, and the rare metals in rare earths need to be extracted by means of electrolysis, ionization or chemical deposition, adsorption, conversion, etc. .

Han Yuan rummaged through the primary material knowledge information in his mind, looking for a method that could smelt most rare metals.

After searching for a while, I finally decided to use the 'ion exchange method' to smelt these rare metals.

This method for smelting ion-adsorbed rare earth ores, if used, can be used to smelt most non-radioactive rare metals.

Although the rare metals in non-ionic adsorbed rare earths are not stored in the rare metal ore in the form of ions, he can make a preparation and process them with organic solvents or acid-base solvents.

After the treatment is completed, the solvent contains rare metals or compounds of rare metals.

Then, the electrolytic material is prepared by mixing a certain proportion of different electrolytes in the solvent, and then processed by ionization reduction, and high-purity rare metal materials or rare metal compounds can be obtained at the cathode.

Finally, one more step of purification treatment can obtain high-purity rare metals.

This method is suitable for the purification of most metals. The disadvantage is that it consumes a lot of electric energy and requires complex organic solvents or acid-base solvents and doping with different electrolytes.

But the advantage is that it has wide adaptability and can handle a variety of complex rare metal ores.

Even if a rare earth contains a variety of different rare metals, this method can also use cathodes of different materials to separate, and finally obtain a complete single rare metal.

Having determined the method of smelting rare metals, the next thing for Won to do is to further select these raw materials piled up like hills.

The rare earth and rare metal ores by the small river are all raw materials mined from the mining area, although when mining, South Korean won try to choose high-quality ores and rare earths as much as possible.

But after all, it is an unprocessed raw material. Not only does it contain a small amount of rare metals, but it is also so huge that it cannot be transported back to the Amazon rainforest base for smelting by aircraft.

So he needs to do a step-by-step selection of these raw materials on Mount Tai.

Just like panning for gold in the sand or mining rough jadeite, a part of the selection is done first, and the useful sand or rough stones are selected and then concentrated.

The method of dealing with these rare metal ores and rare earths is actually very simple.

Both the gravity separation method and the flotation method are suitable for preliminary treatment.

The gravitational separation method separates minerals according to the difference in relative density (usually called specific gravity) of minerals.

Mineral particles with different densities are affected by fluid dynamics and various mechanical forces in the moving medium (water, air and heavy liquid), resulting in suitable loose layering and separation conditions, so that mineral particles of different densities are separated.

This method is suitable for most minerals beneficiation, whether it is metal ore or non-metal ore can be processed.

But this method is only suitable for processing coarse-grained, medium-grained and fine-grained ores, and the diameter of the ore is required to be greater than 25 mm.

If it is lower than this number, the re-election method cannot do detailed processing.

The flotation method is based on the differences in the physical and chemical properties of the mineral surface, and the minerals are selectively attached to the air bubbles through the treatment of flotation agents to achieve the purpose of separation.

Compared with the gravity separation method, the flotation method has a great advantage, that is, the diameter of the processed ore particles can be smaller than 10 μm.

Some flotation technologies that specialize in dealing with very fine particles have a lower limit of recyclable particle size.

The "ultrafine flotation" and "ion flotation technology" developed by flotation technology can recover various substances ranging from colloidal particles to molecules and ions.

However, this method requires high technical difficulty, not only requires a large amount of water resources, but also requires the deployment of corresponding flotation fluids.

But this way is more suitable for him now.

Because rare earth particles are obviously smaller than rare metal ores after crushing, the gravity separation method is not suitable.

When using the flotation method to process various ores, the proportion of the ore flotation liquid is the most important.

The supporting flotation liquid and top-level flotation technology are highly confidential things of major mining companies.

Although the general flotation liquid materials and proportions are public, but the detailed proportions are different, and the utilization efficiency of the ore that can be floated by the flotation liquid is completely different.

Even if the flotation efficiency of the flotation liquid on the ore is only a percentage higher, the utilization rate of the ore can be greatly increased, and more metal materials can be produced.

Therefore, in the real world, high-end and top-level flotation technologies are controlled by foreign mineral companies, which is something that Huaguo lacks.

If this technology can be obtained, Huaguo will be able to better deal with all kinds of poor ore in the country.

Like iron resources.

There is no shortage of iron ore in Huaguo. There are countless lean iron ores with grades around [-] and [-], but there are very few rich iron ores with grades of [-], [-] or even higher.

However, the cost of smelting these lean iron ores with a grade of [-] or [-] is higher than that of imported iron ore.

Part of the reason is that there are too many impurities, flotation is too difficult, and the purity of the iron ore produced by flotation is not enough, which will affect the subsequent iron ore smelting.

Self-flotation smelting low-grade iron ore costs more money than importing high-grade iron ore, and it is more troublesome. It is self-evident which one to choose.

In the science and technology industry, every step is wrong, every step is wrong, this is unavoidable.

The South Korean won didn't know this before, only that the country imports countless iron ore and steel every year.

At first, he thought that there were not so many iron ore available in the country. Later, when he collected information on ore veins around the world, he realized that there was no shortage of iron ore resources in the country, but a lack of high-grade iron ore.

Although it is true that high-grade iron ore is easier to purify and smelt, and the cost is lower, but it is imported after all, and it costs a lot of money.

If you can master more advanced beneficiation technology and use domestic low-grade iron ore, you don’t even need the advantages of this technology, as long as the cost of smelting low-grade ore is reduced to that of imported high-grade iron ore Iron ore is almost the same, so the money that can be saved from imported iron ore every year is calculated in tens of billions or hundreds of billions.

For example, in 2020, Huaguo imported a total of 11.7 billion tons of iron ore and spent 8228.7 billion yuan.

Among them, 7.317 million tons of iron ore were imported from Australia, accounting for 62.5% of the total imports.

Calculated at the average price, importing iron ore from Australia alone in 2020 will cost 5146 billion.

But this is still not familiar with this, often restricting exports or raising prices or something.

(End of this chapter)