{"id":267980,"date":"2025-06-17T10:44:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T14:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/noticias\/china-extracts-rubidium-from-brine-and-reduces-dependence-on-imports\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T13:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T17:40:13","slug":"china-extracts-rubidium-from-brine-and-reduces-dependence-on-imports","status":"publish","type":"noticias","link":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/news\/china-extracts-rubidium-from-brine-and-reduces-dependence-on-imports\/","title":{"rendered":"China extracts rubidium from brine and reduces dependence on imports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

China has taken a firm step towards sovereignty in mineral resources mineral resources<\/a><\/strong> with the commercial production of 99.9% pure<\/strong> rubidium chloride (RbCl<\/strong>) from brine<\/strong>. The achievement was announced by the Qinghai Salt Lake Institute (ISL), part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and represents a viable alternative to importing the metal from Canada and Zimbabwe. <\/p>\n\n

Rubidium extraction from unconventional sources<\/h2>\n\n

The new process developed by Chinese researchers can recover rubidium from potassium chloride tailings containing as little as 0.001 % of the metal.<\/strong> This ability to extract and purify the element from such low concentrations represents a key technical breakthrough, especially considering that 97% of China’s reserves are in low-grade hard rock. <\/p>\n\n

This metal is essential for technological sectors such as the manufacture of specialized specialized glass manufacturing, electronics<\/a><\/strong>electronics and defense. In addition, rubidium ions are used to improve the efficiency of perovskite solar cells and in high-precision atomic clocks. Domestic extraction reduces the vulnerability of the supply chain, in a context where the United States has classified rubidium as a critical mineral since 2022. <\/p>\n\n

A predictive model and an integrated process<\/h2>\n\n

The ISL team developed a chemical model that predicts the behavior of rubidium in brines and low grade ores. brines and low-grade ores.<\/a><\/strong>. This knowledge enabled the design of a recovery system that includes washing, leaching, enrichment and purification. The practical application was carried out at Qarhan Lake, a salt-rich source in Qinghai Province. <\/p>\n\n

A 2022 study led by Gao Dandan of ISL estimated that the cost of RbCl obtained by this method is one-third of the market price. The project is financially supported by CAS, Qinghai Province and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. <\/p>\n\n

The new process could position China as a key supplier of rubidium<\/strong> and reduce its dependence on external sources. According to Interesting Engineering, in 2021, the country imported more than 66% of its rubidium concentrate.<\/a><\/strong>. This development provides a competitive alternative in the race to secure strategic minerals in the face of growing geopolitical tensions. <\/p>\n\n

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Photo: Shutterstock<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rubidium was extracted at 99.9 % purity from a source containing only 0.001 % of the metal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9014,"featured_media":267810,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categoria_noticias":[13030,13060],"etiqueta_noticias":[],"class_list":["post-267980","noticias","type-noticias","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categoria_noticias-industry","categoria_noticias-mining"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/267980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/noticias"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9014"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/267980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"categoria_noticias","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categoria_noticias?post=267980"},{"taxonomy":"etiqueta_noticias","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inspenet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/etiqueta_noticias?post=267980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}