On the occasion of the visit of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi (also translated as Pelosi, Pelosi or Polosi) to Taiwan, the mainland’s Ministry of Commerce issued a statement this morning (3rd) saying that it will suspend natural exports to Taiwan from now on. sand.
Natural sand is mainly composed of quartz grains with a small amount of debris and argillaceous rivers, lakes, and marine clastic sediments. In the early years of Taiwan, sand was mined from east to west, and after river sand was banned, many items were imported from the mainland and used for construction sand and stone.
According to reports, natural sand is mainly formed by weathering of rocks, and rock particles with a particle size of less than 5 mm are called natural sand. The mud content of natural sand means that the particle size is less than 0.075 mm, it is composed of viscous clay particles, the plasticity index is large, and it has no connection effect with the crystalline stone after cement hydration, so the mud content of natural sand is directly The composition that affects the strength of concrete.
According to the introduction of the General Administration of Customs of China, river sand is a non-metallic ore with complex composition, a certain smooth surface and a high content of impurities.
River sand is mostly used in construction, concrete, cementitious materials, road building materials, artificial marble, cement physical property testing materials (ie, cement standard sand), etc. It can also be used in foundry, metallurgy, heat treatment, steel structure, frame structure, repair, Sand cleaning, rust removal, strengthening, forming, stress relief and surface cleaning and coating of various profiles in bridges, mines and other fields.
Taiwanese businessmen: I can’t grab it, it doesn’t matter
Taiwan’s “Central News Agency” reported that for the mainland’s suspension of exporting natural sand to Taiwan, Taiwan’s ready-mixed concrete industry said that the sand and gravel in the central and southern regions are mainly mined locally, and only the areas north of Chungli need to be imported from the mainland due to the ban on mining, but most of the sand and gravel are mainly mined locally. It is imported “machine-made sand” developed and processed with mine sand.
The industry pointed out that the domestic sales price of natural sand from the mainland is good, and Taiwanese companies could hardly grab it in the past. Therefore, the mainland banned the export of natural sand, which has no impact on Taiwan.
The wafer industry needs rare earth and quartz sand
For some netizens who said that natural sand is the raw material for making chips, and banning the export of natural sand to Taiwan is to sanction TSMC in disguise, some Taiwanese netizens pointed out that the two are not related at all. The wafer industry will use rare earth, quartz sand, etc.
Rare earth is a collective name for 17 rare metals, which are in demand in various contemporary high-tech industries, such as consumer electronics, motorcycles, renewable energy power generation, chemical industry, machinery, textiles, defense industry, and core components.
Quartz sand is the raw material for silicon in semiconductors. The hardness of ordinary sand is not comparable to that of quartz sand. The difference between quartz sand and ordinary sand mainly lies in the content of silica. Quartz sand is sand with high purity, which is processed by special processes such as natural quartz stone crushing, selection, magnetic separation, and gravity separation. Ordinary sand does not have such a high degree of purity.
The mineral content in quartz sand varies greatly, mainly quartz, followed by feldspar, mica, cuttings, heavy minerals, clay minerals, etc. Quartz has higher refractoriness than ordinary sand, and the quartz sand generally used for casting can withstand high temperature of 1750 degrees Celsius.