China is a top aluminium producer and consumer but it lacks the high-quality bauxite needed to make it. The country instead relies on imported aluminium ore from Guinea and Australia – but that could soon change.
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A plant in the central province of Shanxi is being upgraded with a French technology that will enable it to produce aluminium from China’s low-grade ore that was previously unusable.
The Bayer process, invented by Austrian chemist Karl Josef Bayer in 1888, is widely used to refine bauxite into smelting-grade alumina, or aluminium oxide – the precursor to aluminium.
But it is not an efficient or cost-effective way to refine bauxite with a high silica content, the main ore type in China. Silica is an impurity that could result in a substantial loss of alumina and caustic soda – a solution used to dissolve bauxite in the Bayer process.
After a decade of research, French chemist Yves Ocello, from green tech company IB2, has come up with a way to transform low-grade bauxite into a high-quality material. The process neutralises silica and sulphur, meaning high-silica bauxite can be refined using the Bayer method.
In 2023, IB2 signed a 22-year agreement with Chinese firm Liulin Senze Coal & Aluminum to switch over to the technology.
