China announces export control of 3 highly sensitive graphite items! Influence geometry?
On October 20, the Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued the announcement on Optimizing and Adjusting the Temporary Export Control Measures for Graphite Items, formally including three highly sensitive graphite items, including ductile graphite, which had previously been temporarily controlled, into the export control list of dual-use items; At the same time, the temporary control of five kinds of low-sensitive graphite items, such as carbon electrodes for furnaces, which are mainly used in basic industries of the national economy, such as iron and steel, metallurgy, and chemical industry, will be abolished.
The above policy will be officially implemented from December 1, 2023.
According to Xinzhixun, graphite has a variety of physical and chemical properties such as high temperature resistance, high thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity, thermal shock resistance, flame retardancy, high compressive strength, high corrosion resistance, low friction and self-lubrication, and is mainly used in coatings, powder metallurgy, steelmaking, refractories, lubricants and other fields.
Before the 19th century, graphite was mainly used as a raw material for refractory materials and pigments due to its high and low temperature resistance and electrical conductivity. With the deepening of the understanding of the properties of graphite such as corrosion resistance, radiation resistance and self-lubrication, its application fields are becoming more and more extensive. High-purity graphite, graphite for the nuclear industry, graphite fiber, silicon-impregnated graphite, etc. have appeared. Especially in recent years, the discovery of graphene has attracted widespread attention in emerging fields such as electronic communications, lithium-ion batteries, aerospace and military industry, biomedicine, environmental protection, solar energy, and optoelectronics, and the future graphite materials have great potential in the high-tech industry market.
From the perspective of global graphite reserves, according to the statistics of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), by the end of 2020, the world's proven natural graphite resource reserves were about 320 million tons, and the total global graphite production in 2020 was 1.1 million tons.
From the perspective of spatial regional distribution, nearly 99.91% of the world's graphite resources are highly concentrated in Turkey, China, Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, India, Uzbekistan and Mexico and other nine countries on six continents except Antarctica (the total graphite resource reserves of 9 countries are 319.7 million tons), and the rest of the known reserves are mainly distributed in Vietnam, the Czech Republic, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Norway, Russia, Ukraine and other countries.
Map of world graphite resources in 2020
Among them, Turkey's graphite resource reserves rank first in the world, about 90 million tons, accounting for 28.13% of the global reserves; China ranks second, with about 73 million tons, accounting for 22.81% of global reserves; Brazil ranks third, with about 70 million tons, accounting for 21.88% of global reserves; Madagascar ranks fourth with about 26 million tons, accounting for 8.13% of global reserves; It is followed by Mozambique, Tanzania, India, Uzbekistan and Mexico, with reserves accounting for about 7.81%, 5.31%, 2.50%, 2.38% and 0.97% respectively.
From the perspective of graphite mining, China's natural graphite production ranked first in the world in 2021, accounting for 67.05% of the total global natural graphite production; Brazil's total natural graphite production accounted for 7.77%; Madagascar's total natural graphite production accounted for 7.20%; Mozambique's total natural graphite production accounted for 5.89%; India's total natural graphite production accounted for 3.29%; 1.25% of the total production of natural graphite in Russia; Turkey's total natural graphite production accounted for 1.24%.
Included in the export control this time are flake graphite and its products (including spherical graphite and expanded graphite).
Among them, spherical graphite is made of high-quality flake graphite as raw material, using advanced processing technology to modify the surface of graphite, and produce graphite products of different fineness and shape like elliptical spheres. It is mainly used as an anode material for electronic devices and lithium-ion batteries for new energy vehicles.
Expanded graphite is a loose and porous worm-like substance obtained by intercalation, washing, drying and high-temperature expansion of natural flake graphite. Because expanded graphite not only retains the excellent properties of natural graphite such as high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, radiation resistance, electrical conductivity, etc., but also has many unique excellent properties, such as flexibility, resilience, self-adhesiveness, impermeability, adsorption and low density, it is mainly used as adsorbent, sealing materials, biomedical materials, phase change heat storage materials, high-energy battery materials, fireproof materials, etc., and is widely used in petroleum, chemical, atomic energy, electric power, pharmaceutical and other aspects.
Editor: Xinzhixun - Ronin Sword