Research on the development trend of nickel resource industry chain under the background of “dual carbon”

Under the background of “dual carbon”, the global energy green and low-carbon transformation has led to the explosive growth of mineral resources required by the new energy industry. Nickel, as one of the critical minerals for low-carbon and clean energy, has become the focus of contention in the world. Understanding the development status and trend of global nickel resource industry chain under the background of “dual carbon” would help provide basic insights for the sustainable development of nickel resource exploitation and relevant references for the government and enterprises to improve the competitiveness of the nickel resource industry chain. Starting from the industrial chain of nickel resources, this paper systematically reviews the specific impact of the “dual carbon” target on global nickel resource industry chain in terms of resource supply and demand, smelting and processing, end consumption, recycling. Through analysis, the increase of demand and high nickelization in power battery under the background of “dual carbon” promote the rapid growth of global nickel resource demand, the global nickel resource supply and demand show a “dual supply-dual demand” industrial pattern. In terms of smelting production mode, the “nickel-iron-high-ice nickel” process opens up the barrier between sulfide nickel ore and laterite nickel ore by fire smelting, making nickel iron can be converted into high-ice nickel, and accelerating the development and utilization of laterite nickel ore. HPAL wet smelting process will become the main smelting process of laterite nickel ore in the future because of its advantages in recovery rate and cost. In terms of recycling, countries around the world have introduced a series of policies to strengthen the recycling and utilization of nickel resources, and China, as the first consumer of nickel resources in the world, has broad prospects for the recycling of nickel resources for waste power batteries. With the promotion of the global “dual carbon” goal in the future, the rapid development of new materials, new energy and other emerging industries has promoted the continuous expansion of nickel demand, which has a great impact on the supply pattern of upstream mineral raw materials of the nickel industry chain, the selection of smelting technology in the middle stream and the structure of intermediate products, and the supply side has turned to the mineral raw materials with rich reserves, easy mining and easy smelting. Smelting technology is developing in the direction of high recovery rate, low raw material cost and low energy consumption cost.