{"id":60860,"date":"2016-11-22T04:53:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T11:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=60860"},"modified":"2016-11-22T04:53:56","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T11:53:56","slug":"china-and-the-mineral-sands-of-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/11\/22\/china-and-the-mineral-sands-of-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"CHINA AND THE MINERAL SANDS OF SRI LANKA."},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA\u00a0 PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The East coast of Sri Lanka is known to be rich in mineral sands. Pulmoddai has a very high concentration of heavy minerals and is considered one of the best beach mineral sand deposits in the world. Pulmoddai is located about 60 kilometers north of Trincomalee, midway between Mullaitivu and Trincomalee. The beach sand deposit in Pulmoddai is \u00a0\u00a0about 10 kms in length with an average width of 100 meters.\u00a0 If not collected the deposit gets washed off into the sea with the monsoon but gets replenished every year.<\/p>\n

An off shore survey along Pulmoddai, from the mean high water mark, covering the entire length of the deposit, was completed in 1980.\u00a0 This showed a reserve of 903,000 metric tons of ilmenite, 9500 metric tons of rutile and 39,000 metric tons of zircon.\u00a0 In 1986, it was estimated to contain over 6 million tons of \u2018heavy sands\u2019 composed of 70-72 % ilmenite, 8-10% zircon, 8% rutile, 0.3% monazite and<\/u> 1% sillimanite.\u00a0 National Atlas of Sri Lanka\u00a0 ( 2 ed. 2007) said it has a proven reserve of around 8000,000 to 10,000,000 tonnes of ilmenite, 9,000,000 tons of rutile and 7,000,000 tons of zircon. Experts say that around 12.5 million tons of unexplored mineral sands are still available in this area (2014).<\/p>\n

In 1980 three other very promising deposits were found along the coastal stretch from Mullaitivu to Nilaveli at Nayaru, Poduwakattumalai and Thevikallu. \u00a0These showed a reserve of 2-4 million tons of Ilmenite, 475.000- 700,000 tons of rutile, 350,000-500,000 tons of zircon.\u00a0 A minor deposit of allanite was found in Owella Estate, Matale containing 15% to 20% rare earth elements. There is also sufficient concentration of mineral sands at Kaikawala near Induruwa for economic exploitation.\u00a0 (Daily News CCI Bulletin. 28.7.16 p 34)<\/p>\n

The Pulmoddai mineral sands are greatly sought after\u00a0\u00a0 because of their very high purity. There is 53% of titanium dioxide in the Ilmenite sands and 95% titanium dioxide in the rutile sands. Pulmoddai \u00a0is one of the world\u2019s best known sources for titanium. Titanium is regarded as the metal of the future.\u00a0 Monazite was originally discovered in Sri Lanka\u00a0 in 1914 . Sri Lanka, it appears,\u00a0\u00a0 is among the nine countries with monazite deposits and its deposit is\u00a0 considered\u00a0 second only to that of China . \u00a0Monazite is a byproduct recovered during the purification process of ilmenite, rutile and zircon.\u00a0 It is mined for its rare earth and thorium content. About 300 tons of monazite could be recovered from the 140,000 tons of raw beach sands mined to recover ilmenite. (Daily News CCI Bulletin. 28.7.16 p 34) These mineral sands have wide industrial applications.<\/p>\n

Ceylon Mineral Sands Corporation ( est. 1957) has two plants one in Pulmoddai for the recovery of ilmenite and the other in China Bay in Trincomalee to recover rutile and zircon. They are exported in raw form. Critics observe that while the global industry using rare earth minerals considers Sri Lanka to be a possible supplier of rare earths,\u00a0 the LMSL website does not even speak of the presence of rare earths in the country at all. It seems to be unaware of the world\u2019s demand for their products. (Daily News CCI Bulletin. 28.7.16 p 34).<\/p>\n

The LTTE were aware of the importance of these minerals sands, and they took care not to damage the plant but they cut off the water supply required to process the mineral sand and\u00a0 they disrupted the bulk shipments. Both China and the US are interested in our mineral sands. It is rumored that the USA had instructed Sarath Fonseka to give access to the\u00a0\u00a0 Pulmoddai sands to USA exclusively if he was successful in the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2010 Presidential election.\u00a0 (Daily News 28.1.10 p\u00a0 7) .<\/p>\n

China has been the number one global buyer of Lankan mineral sands in the last few years . It\u00a0 ranks first among the 8 countries that purchase our minerals. China purchased mineral sands worth USD 6.3 million during 2010-2014 . The President of Beijing\u2019s SSG International Holding Group, the biggest mineral exploring firm in China ,\u00a0 visited Sri Lanka\u00a0 in May 2016\u00a0 and said \u2018We are looking for outright purchase of any mineral sand and graphite producing firms of Government of Sri Lanka\u00a0 and looking to fully own them if possible.\u00a0 We think\u00a0 that Sri Lanka has rare earth elements deposits but can do better. We think Sri Lanka is not getting the best price for them in international markets and we can help the sector earn more in their export.\u2019\u00a0 CCI Bulletin says \u2018The Chinese interest in our rare earths shows that\u00a0 the potential and value of our mineral sands is far higher than we have assumed. The increasing usage of rare earths in multiple high tech industrial usages would increase the demand and value especially with the limited availability of raw materials.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA\u00a0 PIERIS The East coast of Sri Lanka is known to be rich in mineral sands. Pulmoddai has a very high concentration of heavy minerals and is considered one of the best beach mineral sand deposits in the world. Pulmoddai is located about 60 kilometers north of Trincomalee, midway between Mullaitivu and Trincomalee. The beach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}