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

• 责任者：Nie Zhen (Institute of Mineral Resources ; Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences ; Beijing 100037 ; China) ; Bu Lingzhong
• 刊名：Acta Geoscientica Sinica
• 出版年：2010
• 卷期：31(1)
• 关键词：卤水 ; brines ; 锂矿 ; lithium ores ; 柴达木盆地 ; Qaidam Basin ; 西藏 ; Tibet
• 页码：p.95-101
• 图表：5 illlus., 3 tables, 29 refs.
• 分类号：1002
• issnNo：ISSN1006-3021
• isbnNo：CN11-3474/P

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.