Sail across the sea

Chapter 403 This joke has gone too far.
As Pei Hengxue left the county government building, he sighed repeatedly, looking as if he had lost a fortune.

In fact, he did lose money, having to pay an extra 30 yuan in contract fees to Gunan County for no reason. He felt as if a piece of his own flesh had been cut off.

"Alright, Director Pei, you're a big shot now, can't you stop being so stingy?"

Gao Fan offered his advice with a sense of helplessness.

"What kind of tycoon am I? I've never even seen what 30 looks like in my entire life, but you made me lose my head with just one sentence and I gave it away like that," Pei Hengxue said dejectedly.

Gao Fan said, "What do you mean I have to say it? We discussed this matter collectively, and Director Xiao agreed. How come you're blaming me for it now?"

“If it’s not your fault, who else is it? We can pretend to be stupid when we persuade Gunan County to raise the contract fee standard. I don’t believe that Gunan County will make us pay more money.”

"Everyone else's prices have gone up, so why shouldn't ours?"

“Zhong Jiangang wouldn’t do that; he still has to consider his relationship with Zeyan Institute.”

"But we'll owe someone a favor, and we'll also leave a topic of gossip that might cause trouble for the institute in the future."

"It's worth it to save 30 yuan, even if it's a bit of a hassle."

"Director Pei, don't be so short-sighted. We leased this mine in Youtang under the guise of conducting industrial experiments. If it doesn't make money, that's fine, but if it does, people will inevitably gossip. By offering to pay more in the lease fee, we'll have room to maneuver when higher authorities investigate this matter later. Haven't we done the math? Even with an extra 30 yuan in lease fees, this mine will still bring the institute at least 100 million yuan in profit. Aren't you satisfied?"

"This is the truth..."

Pei Hengxue admitted it. In fact, Xiao Ping also agreed to increase the contracting fee. Xiao Ping's considerations were consistent with what Gao Fan had just said: the Zeyan Institute's business of contracting mines to make money was too sensitive, bordering on national policy, and if someone were to cause trouble, the Zeyan Institute's leadership would be in a very passive position.

The story of proactively raising contract fees and using this to drive a comprehensive increase in mineral contract fees in Gunan County, thereby promoting the adoption of new mining technologies, sounds quite positive.

Zeyan Institute could even report this as a work achievement to the provincial company, thereby eliminating potential risks in advance.

Gao Fan changed the subject, saying, "Director Pei, the country has proposed three goals for the governance of rare earth development. The first is total quantity control to prevent indiscriminate mining. This is mainly implemented through policy. The next step is for the country to determine a rare earth export quota to control the mining volume in various regions."

"The second task is to improve the resource recycling rate, which focuses on the new technology of our Zeyan Institute. Therefore, the promotion of the new technology will be the top priority in the next two to three years. Doing this well will benefit Zeyan Institute in the present and for the future."

"There is also a third task, which is to carry out deep processing of rare earths, and change the export of mixed oxides to the export of refined single oxides. This matter should also be put on the agenda."

Pei Hengxue said, "Our institute has some experience in rare earth extraction, and Director Xiao is a leading authority in this field in China. However, the most authoritative person in China in rare earth extraction is Professor Xu from Peking University. His cascade extraction method, which he proposed 10 years ago, was the first of its kind in the world."

Gao Fan nodded: "Professor Xu is from our department. He even built a small rare earth factory in our department."

“I know about this. Our metallurgical research lab and your Department of Chemical Engineering at Peking University did a collaborative project on rare earth cascade extraction, and we achieved several results. However, it’s still some distance from industrial application. The investment required for further research is too great.”

"Has this obstacle been overcome now?" "What obstacle?"

"Didn't you just say the investment was too large?"

"You don't mean that our Zeyan Institute will submit the application, do you?"

"if not?"

"Shouldn't this kind of research be funded by the state? We just received a little money, and the institute was planning to use it to build dormitories and improve the living conditions of the staff. Do you know how much money is needed for rare earth extraction research? It's a bottomless pit."

"Why don't you say that once it's developed, it'll be a treasure trove? One ton of 99.9% pure yttrium oxide costs 260,000 RMB on the international market, while one ton of mixed rare earths only costs 26,000 RMB to export—a tenfold difference."

“I understand that principle. But extraction technology and in-situ leaching technology are two different things. We develop in-situ leaching processes, which can provide technical guidance to mines. Every mine needs it, and they can't function without us. Extraction technology is a one-off deal; smelters only need to buy the technology once. Do you really expect smelters to spend millions to buy our technology?”

"Have you ever thought about building your own smelter? For example, calling it Zeyan Rare Earth Smelter."

"Xiao Gao, you've gone too far with this joke!"

Pei Hengxue stopped abruptly.

Huh, build your own smelter?

This idea seems feasible.

Extraction, in essence, is the process of extracting various single oxides from mixed rare earth elements. Southern rare earth elements are characterized by containing a wide variety of elements, including yttrium, dysprosium, praseodymium, neodymium, and samarium. The rarer the element, the more expensive it is; one ton of high-purity yttrium oxide costs 26 yuan, one ton of dysprosium oxide costs 60 yuan, and one ton of europium oxide costs 450 million yuan.

If a smelter with an annual processing capacity of 500 tons of mixed rare earth elements is built to produce high-purity oxides, the annual output value will easily exceed 100 million yuan. Isn't that much better than everyone struggling to earn a few tens of thousands of yuan in technical guidance fees by digging into the mountains?
This idea was proposed by someone when the leaders of the Zeyan Institute got drunk; it was similar to the idea of ​​"when I get rich, I'll buy two bowls of soy milk".

In fact, there are several rare earth smelters in Maolin Province, but their production scale is not large. Moreover, due to the limitations of the extraction process, they produce low-purity oxides, which are only one or two times more expensive than mixed oxides, and the profit is not high.

What Zeyan Institute aims to do is definitely not produce products lacking technological content, but rather to achieve high-purity oxides in one step. The extraction of high-purity oxides requires sophisticated equipment and processes, so the investment is considerable.

Pei Hengxue once asked Xiao Ping, who made an estimate that building a smelter capable of processing 500 tons of mixed rare earth annually would require an equipment investment of at least 1000 million yuan, which was clearly beyond the reach of Zeyan Institute.

What Zeyan couldn't do, this child in front of me can.

He suggested that the Zeyan Institute develop in-situ leaching technology and immediately allocated 100 million yuan. Now he's suggesting that the Zeyan Institute build a smelter; is he also planning to invest in it?
Ten million is an astronomical figure for the Zeyan Institute, but this special envoy Gao himself is an astronomer.

(End of this chapter)