The trona industry has huge development potential, and soda ash is its main downstream product.

Trona is an evaporated salt mineral, which refers to a type of mineral whose main chemical components are sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate. It appears as a fibrous or columnar yellow-white solid with a glass luster. Trona mainly comes from alkali lakes and solid alkali ores. At present, the world’s proven alkali mineral resources are mainly distributed in the United States, Turkey, China, Mexico, Africa and other regions. my country’s trona resource reserves rank third among countries in the world, second only to the United States and Turkey. Domestic trona mineral reserves are nearly 400 million tons, and more than 150 trona mineral origins have been discovered, mainly distributed in Tongbai County, Henan, Alxa, Inner Mongolia and other places.

Trona can be made into a variety of pure alkali products, such as soda ash, caustic soda, baking soda, etc. Among them, soda ash is the main downstream product of trona. Soda ash is an important organic chemical raw material, known as the “mother of the chemical industry”. It can be widely used in industrial glass, food, chemical industry, metallurgy, papermaking, printing and dyeing and other fields, mainly through ammonia It is produced by alkali method, combined alkali method and natural alkali method.

The trona method refers to the process of producing soda ash using trona ore resources as raw materials through physical processes such as dissolution, filtration, evaporation, and crystallization. Using the trona method to produce soda ash can reduce water consumption by about 76%, reduce carbon emissions by about 65%, and produce almost no waste liquid or solid waste. Compared with the other two methods, the trona method has the advantages of being green, pollution-free, energy-saving and environmentally friendly, low in production cost, and stable in product quality. It is the most promising method in the soda ash industry. However, this method is also limited by trona mineral resources. limit.

According to the “Global Trona Industry In-depth Market Research and Key Area Research Report 2023-2028” released by the Industrial Research Center, in Globally, the United States, as the country with the largest trona reserves, all its domestic soda ash is supplied by trona, and it has become the world’s largest exporter of soda ash; Turkey is the second largest country with trona reserves in the world, and its domestic trona process accounts for It has exceeded 70%, making it the second largest exporter of soda ash; China is the third largest country in terms of trona reserves in the world. However, due to the low degree of resource development, the domestic trona process currently accounts for less than 10%, and the production capacity is far lower than that of the United States. With Turkey, local trona companies will need to continue to introduce advanced technology and increase resource development in the future.

Industry analysts People said that Yuanxing Energy is the only company in China that uses the trona method to produce soda ash. The company currently has a trona production capacity of 1.8 million tons/year. At the same time, the company’s Alxa trona project is advancing in an orderly manner as planned. The first-phase production capacity of 3.4 million tons/year trona and the second-phase production capacity of 4.4 million tons of trona are expected to be completed by the end of 2025. In the future, after all domestic trona projects under construction are put into operation, the trona production capacity will increase several times, and the industry has huge development potential.