A Possible Solution To The Tsingshan RiddleThe entire nickel industry is in bewilderment about Tsingshan's claim, late last year, to bring on 50,000 TPY of nickel-in-battery-chemicals at a calculated CAPEX cost of only $14,000 per tonne of annual productive capacity. The mouths of established industry "experts" are hanging open in disbelief. Yet one possible answer is right in front of their noses.
The first mistake these so-called experts made was to jump to the assumption that the Tsingshan plans would use a conventional HPAL flowchart. That would include processing the full volume of mined laterite ore (limonite portion only) through acid charged autoclaves. The high acid consumption and large quantities of acidic tailings are two of the largest contributors to both CAPEX and operating costs.
At the same time, Mark Selby of RNC has been saying for some time that the addition of a matte converter, likely as a last stage of an RKEF NPI production line, would be all that was needed to prepare for leaching. We can see the same thing in the Lonmin Marikana matte leach paper that I posted previously. Here is is again:
https://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v118n04p353.pdf My interest is this paper was initially because 21.8% of the matte was present as awaruite and I was looking for precedents to strengthen the case that FPX should consider leaching their awaruite concentrate as a step towards the production of battery chemicals.
Getting back to Tsinshan, it is not hard to imagine that the plan might not be to go the conventional HPAL route at all. Rather than leach all of the mined ore, it seems likely that they are planing to add matte converters to some of their NPI lines and then regrind and leach only this fraction. The list of advantages over conventional HPAL is extensive:
1.) Consistency of feedstock results in less technological risk;
2.) Much lower acid consumption;
3.) Greatly reduced volume of acidic tailings.
Viewed in this manner, the $14,000 CAPEX per tonne of annual capacity can be viewed as an incremental investment on top of the CAPEX necessary for RKEF NPI. So the price of nickel is not going to take a dive based on some radical new technological breakthrough. And all these experts can just take a breath and relax.