Chemical industry park begins construction

By Yan Wanqin. Fu Wei, Xu Zhengyu, Yang Tingting also contributed to this article.

A major chemical industry park broke ground in the Yichang High-Tech Zone on December 5, with a total investment of 9.6 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion).

"We plan to build more than 10 high-end new energy materials and electronic chemicals projects (in the park), leveraging fluorine, silicon and other resources associated with the Yichang phosphorus chemical industry cluster," said Tian Nianyi, deputy general manager of Do-Fluoride New Materials Co., Ltd., which co-invested in the park along with Yihua Group, the leading chemical group in Yichang.

Do-Fluoride New Materials focuses on the development, production and sale of inorganic fluorides, electronic chemicals, lithium-ion batteries and related materials.
 

Fluorosilicic acid is the most important raw material in the newly constructed park. It is produced during the concentration and reaction of phosphoric acid.

The Baiyang Industrial Park, within which the new project is being built, will concentrate and react 800,000 tons of phosphoric acid and produce 48,000 tons of fluorosilicic acid annually.

Xue Jiaxin from the production department of Do-Fluoride New Materials Co., Ltd. said: "We are working with Yihua Group to develop and fully utilize fluorosilicic resources. Fluorosilicic acid can be processed into anhydrous hydrogen fluoride. Based on this, we can further develop and produce new energy materials, electronic chemicals and other products."

At present, the domestic annual production capacity of anhydrous hydrogen fluoride is about 2.4 million tons, of which 95 percent is extracted and processed from fluorspar.

Zou Shuang, director of Yihua Group's fluorine chemical project, said: "Compared with extraction from fluorite, producing anhydrous hydrogen fluoride from fluorosilicic acid is significantly cheaper."

The first phase of the new chemical industry park includes projects with annual production capacities of 60,000 tons of anhydrous hydrogen fluoride, 20,000 tons of electronic grade hydrofluoric acid, 30,000 tons of anhydrous aluminum fluoride, 20,000 tons of lithium hexafluorophosphate and an unspecified amount of high-purity silicon tetrafluoride.

Among them, electronic grade hydrofluoric acid is widely used in the semiconductor and chip industry. Lithium hexafluorophosphate is one of the key raw materials in new energy vehicle batteries.

The park also plans to build other projects along the silicon chemical industry value chain, such as electronic specialty gas, silicon carbon anode, lithium batteries and energy storage systems.

When the park is completed, its annual output value is expected to reach 20 billion yuan.