This week, China rare earth prices fell first and then rose. At the beginning of the week, due to the slightly increased supply of rare earth raw materials, the strong sentiment of downstream users to suppress prices and the weak demand, the prices of praseodymium, neodymium, dysprosium, terbium and NdFeB roughs fell. 

This week, China molybdenum market showed a pattern of first decline and then rise. Affected by the limited rise in steel prices and the strong sentiment of steel companies to suppress prices at the beginning of the week, the overall center of gravity of molybdenum product prices still moved down slightly.

Analysis of latest tungsten market from Chinatungsten Online

China’s ammonium paratungstate (APT) and tungsten powder prices edge higher on April 19, 2023 with the support from the raw material side. 

Analysis of latest tungsten market from Chinatungsten Online

China tungsten price has ended its downward trend and started to increase in the week began on Monday April 18, 2023 due to the following reasons: 

Rare earth market quotation in China: terbium oxide, erbium oxide and holmium oxide prices continue to decline on April 19, 2023 mainly due to weak demand from downstream users and a strong sentiment to suppress prices. However, under this situation, good news has been continuously released, so the rare earth market is still expected to pick up.

Molybdenum market quotation in China: sodium molybdate, ammonium molybdate and ammonium heptamolvbdate prices continue to decline on April 19, 2023. The enthusiasm of downstream users to enter the market for inquiries and purchases and the awareness of suppliers to insist on quotations have all increased, so the actual production volume is still acceptable.

In order to reduce the loss of W and extend its service life in high temperature oxidation environment. The development of self-passivating tungsten alloys and their surface protection technology has attracted widespread attention. Researchers investigated the performance of tungsten armor PFC at HHF to evaluate the choice of starting ITER operation with an all-tungsten shunt at heat currents of 10 and 20 MW.m^-2. The tungsten armor was subjected to 100-5000 cycles of thermal fatigue tests, and in the FE200 test, the change in surface morphology was not significant at a heat flow of 10 MW.m^-2 for 5000 cycles.

Tungsten is widely used in nuclear fusion reactors as a highly regarded plasma-oriented material (PFM). However, it has poor oxidation resistance at high temperatures. In the event of a reactor de-cooling accident, the tungsten alloy is rapidly oxidized and volatilized as air enters the vacuum chamber, which will cause a catastrophic nuclear leakage accident. Scholars have conducted a lot of research and pointed out that the development of self-passivating tungsten alloys and surface protection technology is an effective way to solve this problem.

Analysis of latest tungsten market from Chinatungsten Online

At the beginning of the week, China tungsten price continued its stability because there was no obvious change in the fundamentals of supply and demand in the market. 

Analysis of latest tungsten market from Chinatungsten Online

China tungsten price was stable in the week ended on Friday April 14, 2023 affected by the continued weakness in the demand side. Some smelters reduced their production properly in order to stabilize market price and the whole market was relatively weak.