Sunresin’s Ruashi Cobalt Extraction Project started up in DR Congo

On December 30, 2021, good news came from the Democratic Republic of Congo in Central Africa. The Ruashi cobalt extraction project undertaken and fully operated by Sunresin was officially put into production and successfully produced the first batch of cobalt products. From project design, skid manufacturing to construction of the plant, equipment installation, on-site and remote commissioning, Sunresin takes charge of the project in a one-stop-shop fashion. The successful commissioning of the project marks a big step for Sunresin, in the spirit of innovation, to carry out comprehensive overseas EPC projects in hydrometallurgy, by overcoming numerous difficulties at this challenging time. It also demonstrates the company’s potential in the cobalt extraction market in Africa and the international market, as well as in the field of hydrometallurgy as a whole, after some successful large-scale projects of lithium extraction from salt brine.

For the Ruashi cobalt extraction project, Sunresin engineers arrived on site in June 2021 to start civil construction, which was completed and put into production in December. In the project, Sunresin designed, constructed, and operated independently from the scratch. During the implementation period, the team overcame various challenges such as unfamiliar living conditions, language barriers, cultural differences, as well as the impact of the pandemic, to finally realize the successful commissioning and operation of the cobalt extraction production line.

As a rare metal with high energy density, cobalt is an important element of ternary batteries. With the rapid development of the Electric Vehicles industry, the supply-demand relationship of cobalt has been tight for a long time. Congo (DRC) is a cobalt-rich country with its output accounting for up to 70% of the global output. The successful industrialization of this cobalt extraction project will leade to an increase in the supply of cobalt, thus contributing to the sustainable development of the new energy industry.

Sunresin’s Ruashi project features the extraction of cobalt from the precipitation liquor of cobalt hydroxide. The project included a collaborative effort with Sunresin’s Remote Solution Operation and Monitoring Center (RESOM) in Xi'an, an innovative initiative put in place during the lockdown period in 2020 to serve domestic and international EPC projects.

With its patented Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) technology for continuous ion exchange, as well as the selective cobalt adsorption materials, Sunresin has managed to increase the concentration of cobalt ions in the precipitation liquor from 0.1g/L to 20g/L, making the original mother liquor with little value a new source of cobalt supply. The successful implementation of this project will add more than 300 tons of cobalt products per annum to the Jinchuan Ruashi project, thereby realizing an annual income of tens of millions of dollars.

Sunresin's complete solution for cobalt extraction is a first-timer application in the field of cobalt extraction. Not only was it the first successful large-scale industrialization project in Congo (DRC), it also helped to broaden the application range of the adsorption technology in the whole new energy sector. Taking the Ruashi project as a starting point, Sunresin will learn from the project, lean on its cutting-edge technologies, and replicate the experience to other projects of cobalt extraction and provide better solutions on a larger scale.