Inorganic Fluoride Chemicals Industry in China        

By Wang Xiaofeng, Cai Enming, China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association  

Since the inorganic fluoride chemicals industry sprang up in the 1930's, its product variety has been on the increase, and the fields of applications keep expanding. Inorganic fluorides are widely used in metallurgy, electronics, war industry, medicine, agriculture, etc.

Market Status    
In China, the first major application field for inorganic fluorides is metallurgy, which accounts for over 73% of the total consumption; next comes glass production, abrasives and fluridizer sectors, which, in total, use about 24%; other markets such as specialties in the war industry, electronic products consume the rest. Currently, China has over 800 manufacturers of grinding wheels, nearly 800 makers of abrasives and over 600 smelting plants for non-aluminum metal (regardless of their scales), and their consumption of fluoride salts is approximately half of the global consumption of non-aluminum fluoride.

Current Production Situation     
Among inorganic fluoride products, fluoride salt products, such as cryolite, aluminum fluoride, etc., make up the overwhelming majority of the total, and the output of other products is much less.
   In 2008, the production capacity of domestic manufacturers of fluoride salts was approximately 680 000 tons, including 170 000 tons of cryolite and 510 000 tons of aluminum fluoride. At present, the much larger manufacturing enterprises of fluoride salts in China mainly include two enterprises, Do-Fluoride Chemicals Co., Ltd. (DFD) and Hunan Nonferrous Fluoride Chemical Co., Ltd., each with over 100 000 t/a of fluoride salts capacity. On March 20th, 2009, DFD announced that the company has laid a foundation to launch construction of lithium hexafluorophosphate, sodium fluoaluminate and high performance inorganic fluorides projects. (CCR2009 No.10) So DFD's capacity to produce fluoride salts will continue to increase dramatically in the next few years.

Technical Level    
China presently has many fluoride salts production technologies with independent intellectual property rights, and the anhydrous aluminum fluoride techniques, which were re-innovated after introduced to China from overseas, have also reached a world class level. In the development of new products, China has developed potassium aluminum fluoride, borofluoride, fluotitanate and fluosilicate product series, etc., and some of these products and their related techniques have filled both the domestic and international gaps. Although in recent years, China's technical level in inorganic fluoride has improved dramatically, a big gap still remains between the domestic and international levels in terms of research, development and production of high value-added fine products (electronic-level fluoride), and currently, about 60% of fine products (electronic-level fluoride) still rely on import. (CCR2008 No.21)
    With the technical development in the fields of metallurgy, chemical industry, machinery, optical instruments and electronics, etc., as well as the increase of China's requirements for environmental protection, the structural adjustment for inorganic fluoride chemical products has become an irresistible general trend.

Prospects
The inorganic fluoride chemical industry is expected to be increasingly concentrated in China in the future for two reasons. First, the costs of fluoride salt products produced in some foreign countries are relatively high owing to the factor of raw and processed materials, and their performance to price ratio is low. And second, because of technical barriers, some foreign countries cannot produce fluoride salt products. It can be expected that China will become the major producer and exporter of fluoride salt products, and that the prosperous development of China's inorganic fluoride chemical industry will also inevitably go ahead!

China’s producers of cryolite and aluminum fluoride in 2008    (thousand tons)

Enterprises
    Capacity    Output    Cryolite output    Aluminum Fluoride output
     000 t/a    000 tons    000 tons    000 tons
Do-Fluoride Chemicals Co., Ltd.
    120         123.1       61.5        61.6
Hunan Nonferrous Fluoride Chemical
    110         80.0        16.6        63.4
Baiyin Fluoride Salts Co., Ltd.
    65          37.3        13.0        24.3
Henan Weilai Aluminum Industry Group
    60          55.6        -           55.6
Ningxia King Chemicals Co., Ltd.
    50          36.2        -           36.2
Zibo Nanhan Chemical Co., Ltd.
    35          28.0        7.5         20.5
Baiyin Zhongtian Chemical Co., Ltd.
    30           30.1        7.6         22.5
Guangxi Pingguo Fluoride Salts Co., Ltd.
    30           28.3        7.8         20.5
Zibo Jianda Chemical Co., Ltd.
     10            0.7         -            0.7
Shanxi Guanlu Co., Ltd.
    5            3.7         0.4         3.3
Other
    165          160.0        7.6         152.4
Total
    680         583.0       122.0         461.0