Resumen de Grinding out: : China's GCC sector needs to work hard to change
China's GCC industry developed swiftly in terms of scale between 2011 and 2015, but this expansion also brought problems. According to [Guangchao Qin], the three main challenges facing the sector are excessive consumption of domestic limestone resources to produce GCC via inefficient methods; ecological deterioration due to low environmental standards; and downstream imbalance, with gluts of some kinds of product and shortages of other kinds of GCC material.
The sophistication of processing equipment used to produce GCC has progressed significantly in China, especially in terms of large scale production, but there are still some flaws in the fine grinding, grading and energy consumption parts of the manufacturing cycle. Normal dry method equipment for producing GCC includes [Raymond] mills, vertical roller mills, ring-roll mills and ball mills. Wet processing, on the other hand, generally involves vertical or horizontal sand mills.
HCRDI's Qin explained that dry GCC processing is advantageous for large scale production of material with a mesh size below 2,500, but is unsuitable for producing finely ground products. Wet processing is better for producing fine and functional GCC with mesh sizes between 2,500 and 6,500 or a high proportion of 2 micron particles. However, wet processing is more expensive and energy intensive than the dry method, meaning that the latter is generally preferred by Chinese companies.
