LYNAS

Tarikh: 21 April 2012

Tempat: Lynas, Gebeng

At first Lynas is intended to build the plant at Kemaman or Kerteh ( i can't remember) but in Terengganu. But the process of approval by the state's government there was so slow where finally MIDA invited Lynas to built the plant at Gebeng. Lynas took another 6 months than to redoing the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and radiological impact assesment (RIA) at that new place. 

Lynas process about 33 333 tonne/annual dry lanthanide concentrate from the solid ore received from Australia. Currently Lynas plant is still under construction while the basic unit operation they got are having the preliminary run using water. 

The simplified process that I may explained is as below:

1. Concentrate ore (solid form)  
2. Cracking (phosphate->sulphur)  
3. Leaching (slurry->solution)  
4. upstream solvent extraction  
5. downstream extraction 
6. post treatment (remove impurities)  
7. final furnace (calcination-product) 
8. warehouse 

 

Ika dan Dila

Ruby, aku dan Siti

Budak2 batch aku

Breakfast that day at Lynas' cafeteria.
Got lunch too. Tapi tak sempat snap picture. Makan laju macam celaka.

From ore in solid form that Lynas received from Australia, they process into Lanthanide concentrate first. Lanthanide concentrate is where the iron element that contains in lanthanide ore is removed. From here then the other process are run to produce the products. Lynas produced 6 products which are carbonate family (SEG, HPE, Lc, Ce, La), google please. And the other one is Dd oxide. SEG Carbonate is used in energy saving (lighting), The other carbonates are used  as polishing powder and auto catalyst while Dd oxide is used in electric motor to strengthen the magnet core.

Water Leach Purification (WLP) is one of the residue produced from the process. About 32 000 tonne/annual produced by Lynas with a thorium radioactivity of 6 Bq/g. The limit emission of radioactive by Malaysia's government must be less than 1.0 Bq/g. Lynas is doing their research on converting this WLP into the road based materials (jalan tar). The other  residue are flue gas desulfurization (FGD) with annual production of 29 460 tonne and radioactivity of 0.47 Bq/g which may be released safely to the environment. Still, Lynas is doing research and using this FGD in Gypsum board making. The last residue produced is Mg Rich Synthetic Gypsum (NUF) with the largest annual production of 89 910 tonne but the lowest radioactivity content of 0.25 Bq/g. As u can see from the bottle, that NUF is converted into fertilizers as well as soil condition. Still each residues are going through a lot of process and the crucial part is diluting them to the lower concentration especially for WLP before they are converted into any products. 

Its a reactor tank is it? All pictures credit to Siti. We just tour around the process plant in the bus.  Nothing at Lynas actually. It is still fresh. Still under construction which is expected fully constructed by this June. Here, you will see contractor's workers much more than the engineer. Heh.

Ika said that's the horizontal separator column which normally comes in vertical column. It is so long. I don't know how they actually separate thing in horizontal manner.   

I don't know what the hell is this. The engineer in front who did explain thing to us is seriously explained things to the bus' driver only. Hear nothing. Btw, this picture, it just reminded me of my toys when i was a kid before.

Tak tahu apa. Tak tahu tak tahu. 

One big concern is on the residue is it. Actually Lynas is technically explained all about the plant especially on the residues' tank which contains about 4-5 layers of protections. but i don't feels like drawing that tank here. As far as i can remember, the maximum residue storage tank life is about 6 years. Ok wait, i am not sure about this. I'll check on this later. It is not easy to built a plant and got a licence actually. They have went through a lot of research on the place and ecosystem there, came out with the worst case scenario (what if there is disaster and the residue tank got leakage, what if the products form from the residues are not marketable, etc), etc.

Most of the Lynas' workers and engineers are Malaysians and Malay as the highest one. As explained, they only got 3 experts from China, 1 from India and the technology used is from Germany.most of the local  engineers there came from oil refinery industries. From a little chat with fresh graduate senior from ump who is currently working there, even for the fresh graduated engineer, Lynas paid higher. May i said that the basic is 3.5k where including the allowance, overtime, and other things they may get around 6 to 7k in the first month of working? Not sure either that is the fact or not. That is what a so called preliminary engineer (who works in the early stage of plant process) is paid off. Still u must be a first class graduated to applied there. 

In my point of view, Lynas is actually safe. I don't know what the big deal and issue with this. MTBE is carcinogen. Much more dangerous. their plant is in Gebeng. Still no one saying thing on that. Lynas is putting too much effort to transfer the knowledge to the public. I still think they have a very good RC performance especially here around Kuantan. People please let us at least understand a bit on radioactive and chemicals before saying thing. If u don't want any radioactive surround u, please eat nothing, throw your phone and if u want u can try to kill yourself too as you yourself contains thorium and uranium too.

Before i end this post, let me makes a clear statement. All the information here are based on my notes and understanding from the talk, reading and Lynas' plant visit. Do correct me if you found some facts that are not correct or correlate with your understanding. Pen off.