Current Situation and Development Prospect of Magnesium Oxide Industry in China

China is one of the major producers of magnesium compounds in the world, but the production of magnesium compounds in China is still in the stage of crude primary products, far from meeting the needs of national economic development. Magnesium oxide plays an important role in many inorganic salt products. As one of the main varieties of magnesium products, it belongs to the basic inorganic salt products because of its good performance and wide use. Magnesium oxide has been produced for decades in China, and its production process is basically mature and reliable. In recent years, with the continuous development of industrial magnesium oxide applications and the expansion of its application fields, the demand for industrial magnesium oxide has been increasing, which stimulates the rapid development of production of magnesium oxide in China, and the scale of production and manufacturers is also gradually expanding. There are magnesite, brucite, serpentine and high-quality dolomite with the world's largest reserves in China, as well as salt fields and bittern, which make the production of industrial magnesium oxide have unique conditions. There are many traditional production methods of industrial magnesium oxide. Because of the different resources used, production processes and methods are different.

China is a major producer of magnesium, but not a powerful country. There are hundreds of magnesium compound products in China's economic construction demand, of which the largest demand is magnesia series products: metallurgical, refractory and building materials industries need a large number of light-burned powder, heavy-burned powder, fused magnesia; rubber, ceramics and other industries need industrial magnesia, which belongs to bulk traditional products; chloroprene rubber, fluororubber and adhesives and adhesives. Sealing materials need all kinds of active magnesium oxide, electrical grade magnesium oxide for electric heater, silicon steel grade magnesium oxide for steel plate making, high purity magnesium oxide for electronic industry, national defense industry and aviation industry, pharmaceutical grade magnesium oxide for pharmaceutical industry, reagent grade magnesium oxide for analysis, and special industries such as thin film materials, composite conductive materials, high temperature resistant catalysts need special use. Magnesium oxide, such as magnesium oxide whisker, magnesium peroxide, nanometer magnesia, etc. China is a major producer of magnesium compounds. It exports a lot every year, but still needs to import magnesium compounds.

At present, the raw materials for producing magnesium oxide in the world are mainly divided into two kinds: the first one is to produce 93-95% magnesium oxide with dolomite, magnesite and other solid mineral raw materials with high pollution in less developed countries; the other is to produce more than 96-99% high-purity magnesium oxide from seawater and brine, which are commonly used in advanced Western countries. For a long time, magnesite and dolomite have been the main methods for producing magnesium oxide in China. The quality of magnesium oxide produced from solid ores such as stone is low. Although the imported advanced equipment has been improved in recent years, the purity of magnesium oxide is still lower than 96%, which is difficult to meet the requirements of high purity. At present, the production capacity of light magnesia enterprises in China is mostly 300-500 tons, and few of them reach 1000 tons. Overseas, especially in the United States and Western Europe, the capacity of a single equipment of ordinary calcinable oxidation enterprises is above 10,000 tons. The production scale of the project is 5000 tons, which is large.

Although the scientific research achievements of fine magnesia products are continuous in recent years, the variety and quantity can not meet the needs of the market, let alone export. Because of the small number of fine magnesia products, the economic benefits of magnesium salt enterprises are seriously affected.

At present, although our domestic industrial production of high-purity magnesium oxide series products has been successfully developed and studied, the single cost is relatively high. The functionalization, specialization and refinement of magnesium salt series products have become the focus of research and production all over the world.