Tighter standards mulled for rare earths
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Chinese authorities are studying tighter pollution standards for rare earth miners, leading to fears of a price rise of rare earth exports, said industry observers at a rare earth production base in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
"We heard the new standards will be strict, which will force uncompetitive miners out of the industry," said Zhang Zhong, general manager of Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-earth (Group) Hi-tech Co, the country's biggest rare earth producer.
Zhang said the new regulation will increase the cost of rare earth production and may raise the price of Chinese rare earth exports.
Yang Wanxi, a government advisor involved in the new regulation's drafting, said the new standards are aimed at forcing producers to upgrade production techniques.
For example, experts said the permissible content of the pollutant ammonia nitrogen per liter of production waste water will be lowered to 15 milligrams from the current 25mg, said Yang, a rare earth expert with the government of Baotou City.
He said the experts also suggested the government consider eliminating producers whose annual output capacity is less than 8,000 tons of mixed rare earth products.
Yang said that the draft regulation has been filed to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which is still soliciting industry opinion.
Rare earth, a class of 17 chemical elements, has become important for the manufacture of high-tech products such as flat-screen monitors, electric car batteries, wind turbines, missiles and aerospace alloys.
Mining rare earth damages the environment seriously.
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