Magnesium hydroxide is an important magnesium chemical product, as a kind of alkali agent with extremely strong buffering property and efficient chemical adsorption property, it has wide application in environmental protection, ceramic material, medicine and other fields. In recent years, due to its high decomposition temperature, high thermal stability, non-toxic, smokeless and with smoke suppression, it has been developed faster in the field of inorganic flame retardant. Magnesium hydroxide is alkaline, it can be dissolved in acid and ammonium solution, compared with sodium hydroxide, it has more obvious advantages in a variety of properties, which is also an important reason for the wide application of magnesium hydroxide.
High purity magnesium hydroxide refers to the high purity magnesium hydroxide produced by chemical method, currently the main suppliers in China, the product specifications are generally between 35-40μm particle size. High purity magnesium hydroxide is not only used as the basic raw material for various high purity magnesium oxide and high purity sintered magnesium sand and high purity electrofused magnesium sand, but also has a wide range of applications in itself.
Among the high-purity magnesium hydroxide manufacturers worldwide, the leading ones are European and American enterprises and Japanese enterprises, which have complete high-purity magnesium hydroxide product structure and strong competitive strength. Other high-purity magnesium hydroxide manufacturers include Russia, the United States, Japan and South Korea. 2021 global high-purity magnesium hydroxide demand 36.0 million tons, an increase of 8.5% year-on-year.
At present, the industry leader, Japan and the United States, keep the production process strictly confidential, and even give up the benefits from patent applications. The domestic production technology for high-purity magnesium hydroxide is relatively backward, and the special high-purity magnesium hydroxide products produced by the majority of enterprises generally have low performance and unstable quality.
In 2021, the largest application consumption field of global magnesium hydroxide consumption is environmental protection (industrial wastewater treatment and industrial flue gas desulfurization, etc.), accounting for 45.0% of the total consumption; flame retardant applications accounted for 28.5%, other industrial applications accounted for 26.5%. Used as a flame retardant is the fastest growing area of magnesium hydroxide usage. Also in the pulp and paper industry, magnesium hydroxide is increasingly used as an alternative neutralizer and cellulose protectant, which will also drive the growth of magnesium hydroxide in 2022-2027.
In the global developed countries, most of the applications of magnesium hydroxide are related to environmental projects, such as flue gas desulfurization, acidic wastewater treatment, heavy metal ion removal and flame retardant. Among them, more than 60% of magnesium hydroxide products in developed countries are used as flame retardants in wire and cable industries.
China’s magnesium hydroxide production materials are mainly magnesite, light burning powder, brine and water magnesite chloride, etc.. Liaoning mainly to magnesite as raw material, using mechanical crushing and ultra-fine pulverization process to produce magnesium hydroxide products; Liaoning, Shandong, Hebei and other places use light burned powder direct hydration method to produce heavy magnesium hydroxide; Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang coastal areas use brine synthesis method to produce magnesium hydroxide; Shanxi, Qinghai and other places to salt lake brine, water chloromagnesite as raw material to use synthesis method to produce magnesium hydroxide.
By the end of 2021, China’s high-purity magnesium hydroxide production capacity of about 22.0 million tons. Among them, the largest producer of high-purity magnesium hydroxide is, in 2021 the company’s magnesium hydroxide production capacity scale reached 155,000 tons, the output value scale of 1.63 billion yuan, an increase of 6.2%.
The largest amount of domestic flame retardants in the field or mining method of magnesium hydroxide, high-purity magnesium hydroxide is only limited for nuclear power, electronic wire, rail transportation, optical fiber cable and other cable sheathing, and other special coatings and other fields, but the amount of high-purity magnesium hydroxide is rising year by year. It is expected that the market demand for high purity magnesium hydroxide in China’s flame retardant industry will reach 100,000 tons/year in the next few years.
