Qingzhen promotes green aluminum industry

Qingzhen has a reserve of 390 million metric tons of bauxite resources. By promoting a new development strategy, it has transformed from a bauxite resource-rich area to an aluminum deep processing base.

The red mud left after alumina production contains the rare metal gallium, which is widely used in semiconductor materials, photovoltaic power generation, medicine, and other fields.

Wu Lang, head of gallium metal processing at Guizhou Huajin Aluminum Co, introduced that the company's alumina output is more than 1.6 million tons, and its total gallium production is 50 tons. Because the gallium content is very low, the company carries out refining operations, such as adsorption, analysis, impurity removal, and electrolysis, to extract it. Now, the gallium content of its products can reach 99.99 percent, greatly improving added value.

So far this year, the enterprise has produced about 4 tons of gallium metal. Once it reaches full production, it will achieve an annual output value of 100 million yuan ($13.8 million).

The company's recycled aluminum project transforms discarded car wheels, doors, windows, and cans into bars, ingots, and liquids, which are supplied to downstream enterprises for the production of industrial products.

The project does not consume bauxite and costs only five percent of the electricity used in electrolytic aluminum production. From January to November 2024, the company's production of recycled aluminum exceeded 70,000 tons, reducing carbon emissions by nearly 1 million tons and creating an output value of approximately 1.23 billion yuan.

Qingzhen has gathered 44 aluminum processing enterprises above a designated size, with an annual alumina production capacity of 2.4 million tons and two 500,000-ton recycled aluminum projects, forming a green and circular industrial chain for bauxite mining, metal smelting, deep processing, and recycling.