Qinghai Salt Lake Lithium Demonstration Project Feasibility Study

The salt lakes are widely spreaded in the QingHai Province China which contain abundant resources and tremendously economic potential. Counted as the primary products, the estimated potential value are RMB1.7×104 billion, are an enormous treasury of inorganic salts. The lithium, on behalf of saline resources, is widely used in the new energy sources, new material, IT technology, metallurgy, environmental protection, war industry etc. The saline resources and its deep processing will meet more and more broad market demands and applied prospect.Among these salt lakes, only the 33 salt lakes in Caidamu basin the lithium salt deposits account for beyond 80% in the general lithium reserves of China and 1/3 in the general saline lithium reserves in the world. Chaerhan salt lake is the biggest in the 33 salt lakes, it's also the biggest in China. It contains the highly abundant resources of potassium, magnesium, lithium, boron element and so on. Salt lake group company of QingHai has formed the throughput of 500 thousand tons' potash fertilizer, however, the techniques of producing potash fertilizer will bring 32 million tons old bittern, among them 100000 tons' chlorine lithium and 60000 tons' boric acid.At present, the feasible recycled technology can't be broken through, the resources contained in the old bittern can't be recycled and utilized, only discharge naturally, cause enormously to waste , and will destroy the resource environment. Old bittern discharged only lithium, boron with retrieve 60% is it can create 2 billion of output value to count,the annual economic profit is 0.8 billion, the economic profit is 4 times higher than producing single Potash fertilizer.Qinghai Salt lake propose lithium technology is "the Seventh Five-Year Plan Period" project. After about twenty years of many universities and institutions' efforts, until "Tenth Five Year Plan" period, the economic and technique feasibility still can't be completely broken through.Beijing Research and Institute of Chemical Engineering and Metallurgy, CNNC set up the project of extracting lithium from old bittern discarded in the potassium production of Salt lake and began the research of the technology in 2002. The writer is responsible for the project. The technology got tremendous development in 2004.As the institute engaged in war industry, at the beginning of establishing project we always thinking the feasibility over, it is not very enough to economic consideration. As general, we leave the feasibility research to the professional designing institute. The writer tries to use the financial analysis and depend on the present technique route to do analysis of the economy feasibility of extracting lithium. Suppose the 500 tons scale as the example, according to the feasible analysis, the conclusion is feasible and have huge economy benefits. The article analyzed main resources status of lithium and salt in the world, main production conformation, productivity, price and the changeable demands in the domestic and international market as well as the technology of extracting lithium.