中国盐湖锂资源的产业化现状——以西台吉乃尔盐湖和扎布耶盐湖为例

Lithium Resources Industrialization of Salt Lakes in China:a Case Study of the Xitaijinaier Salt Lake and the Zabuye Salt Lake

锂对国民经济和国家安全具有重要意义,是21世纪的能源金属。近10年,中国主要从国外进口碳酸锂产品。中国是一个多盐湖的国家,盐湖锂占锂资源工业总储量的85%。现代第四纪盐湖主要分布在我国西北的青海、西藏、新疆和内蒙古四省区,具有很好的开发前景。经过多年科研后,目前国内已经在西台吉乃尔和扎布耶两个盐湖建立了卤水提锂产业。本文对比研究了这两个盐湖资源状况和地理气候条件,以及由此而决定的盐湖资源开发工艺流程,探讨了其工艺优化方向。并指出这两个盐湖具有锂资源储量大,品位高的优势,但是受盐湖类型或地理气候条件限制,工艺上有待改善。建议继续加强对盐湖开发技术优化和对盐湖提锂产业的扶持。

Lithium,an energy metal of 21st century,is of great significance to domestic economy and national security.In the past decade,China has mainly relied on import to meet domestic requirement of lithium carbonate products.Salt lakes are well developed in China,which possess 85% of the total industrial lithium reserves.The Quaternary salt lakes,which have good exploitation prospects,are mainly distributed in northwestern China regions such as Qinghai,Tibet,Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.Through years of scientific research,the extraction of lithium products from salt lake brine has been achieved industrially in the Xitaijinaier Salt Lake and the Zabuye Salt Lake located in Qinghai and Tibet respectively.The resources,geography and climatic conditions as well as climate-dependant exploitation process flows of the two salt lakes are summarized and compared with each other in this paper,with a discussion on their optimized processing flows.Though the two salt lakes have the superiority of big reserves and high content of lithium resources,their process flows still need to be improved because of limitation of salt lake types and geographic and climatic conditions.The support to the process optimization of salt lake exploitation and salt lake-based lithium industry need to be further emphasized.