China's Rare Earth Industry Development Status

What is Rare Earth?

Rare earth is the lanthanide elements in the periodic table. They are lanthanum (La), cerium (Ce), praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), terbium (Tb), dysprosium (Dy), holmium (Ho), erbium (Er), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), lutetium (Lu), coupled with its congeners, scandium (Sc) and yttrium (Y), there are totally 17 kinds of elements. According to the elements atomic weight and the physical and chemical properties, they can be divided into light, medium and heavy rare earth elements, the first five elements are the light rare earths, and the rest are the heavy rare earth. Rare earth, because of their unique physical and chemical properties, is widely used in the field of new energy, new materials, energy saving and environmental protection, aerospace, electronics and information, and for example, the cerium oxide powder is an indispensable element in the modern industry.

Characteristics of China's Rare Earth Resources
China has abundant rare earth resources, China's rare earth reserves account for about 23% of the world's total reserves. China's rare earth resources have the following characteristics:
The distribution of resources is North Light & South Heavy. Light rare earth ore is mainly located in Baotou, Inner Mongolia and other northern areas and Sichuan Liangshan, ionic heavy rare earth ore is mainly distributed in the southern region of Ganzhou, Jiangxi, Fujian Longyan, and rare earth supplier also relatively concentrates in the south region. Types of resources are various, and a variety of rare earth minerals, ionic heavy rare earth mine occupies an important position in the world. Light rare earth ore associated radioactive elements of the environmental impact. Most of the light rare earth mine can scale chemical industry, mining, but the thorium and other radioactive elements is difficult to deal with, and it needs to attach importance to human health and ecological environment in the mining and smelting separation process.

China Rare Earth Development Status
Since the reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China's rare earth industry is developing rapidly. Rare earth mining, smelting and application technology, research and development has made great progress, industry scale is expanding, and basically meets the needs of the national economy and social development. Form a complete industrial system. China has formed the heavy rare earth three major production bases of the five southern provinces on behalf of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, the Sichuan Liangshan light rare earth and Jiangxi Ganzhou, has a complete mining, smelting and separation technology and equipment manufacturing, material processing and industrial application system, you can produces more than 400 varieties and over 1000 specifications of rare earth products. In 2011, the Chinese rare earth smelting product yield was 9.69 million tons, accounting for more than 90% of the world production.

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