At the end of 2025, Indonesia's nickel ore industry ushered in the strictest supervision in history — sky-high fines of 6.5 billion Indonesian rupiah per hectare and the legal takeover of benchmark mining areas mark that the world's largest nickel producer has officially shifted from "scale expansion" to "standardization and quality improvement". Meanwhile, the global demand for high-purity nickel from new energy vehicle batteries continues to surge. In the first five months of 2025, the nickel consumption of electric vehicle batteries has reached 131.3 kilotons, and the proportion of high-nickel batteries in the European and American markets has even exceeded 60%. Driven by both policy supervision and quality demand, the smelting and purification process of Indonesia's laterite nickel ore is facing severe challenges, and sodium persulfate, as a high-efficiency oxidative purifying agent, is emerging as a key force to solve this problem.

I. Sodium Persulfate: The "Quality Guardian" for Laterite Nickel Ore Purification

As a strong oxidant, sodium persulfate demonstrates irreplaceable technical advantages in nickel-cobalt separation and purification, with its core value reflected in two key dimensions:

Precise Oxidation Impurity Removal to Improve Product Purity

The peroxodisulfate ion (S₂O₈²⁻) contained in sodium persulfate has strong oxidizing properties. In the purification stage of hydrometallurgy, it can efficiently oxidize low-valence impurity ions such as Fe²⁺ and Mn²⁺ in the leachate to high-valence states. These high-valence ions will rapidly form insoluble oxide or hydroxide precipitates, which can be completely removed through solid-liquid separation, significantly improving the purity of nickel-cobalt solution.

Compared with traditional oxidants, the sulfate ion (SO₄²⁻) produced after the reaction of sodium persulfate is an inherent component of the smelting system. It does not introduce new harmful impurities, avoids the risk of secondary pollution from the source, and is fully compatible with the environmental protection requirements under Indonesia's new policies.

Adapting to Mainstream Processes and Complying with Industrial Upgrading Needs

Hydrometallurgy is the dominant technology for laterite nickel ore smelting in Indonesia, and high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) technology has become the mainstream promotion direction of the industry. Sodium persulfate can be perfectly integrated with this process and seamlessly connected in the "leaching-purification-extraction" process: magnesium oxide first adjusts the pH value of the ore pulp and assists in preliminary impurity removal, then sodium persulfate conducts deep purification. The synergistic effect of the two can improve the nickel recovery rate.

For the treatment of low-grade laterite nickel ore, the advantages of sodium persulfate are more prominent. A large number of laterite nickel ores in Indonesia have low nickel content and exist in the form of nickel silicate, which is difficult to be efficiently enriched by traditional processes. Through precise oxidation and impurity removal, sodium persulfate can effectively separate nickel from associated elements such as silicon and iron. Combined with processes like reduction roasting, it can increase the grade of nickel concentrate to meet the export standards of Indonesian mineral products.

As the world's leading producer of sodium persulfate, Fujian Zhanhua Chemical Co., Ltd. has established an integrated industrial chain covering raw material procurement, manufacturing and logistics distribution. Currently, the company has an annual output of 75,000 tons of ammonium persulfate, 50,000 tons of sodium persulfate and 12,000 tons of potassium persulfate, ensuring stable supply. For the Indonesian market, the company has optimized its logistics layout to deliver products to customers quickly through ports such as Jakarta and Surabaya. Sodium persulfate has been applied on a large scale in major nickel-cobalt projects in Indonesia, helping enterprises reduce the impurity treatment cost per ton of nickel products while meeting the quality requirements of battery-grade raw materials, and has become an important supporting material for the technological export of Chinese-funded enterprises.

II. Policy and Demand Resonance: Sodium Persulfate Opens Up New Application Space

Although Indonesia's new nickel ore policies have caused short-term shocks to the industry, in the long run, the quality upgrading of compliant production capacity will create huge market opportunities. On the one hand, the global new energy vehicle industry's demand for high-nickel batteries continues to grow. The high proportion of NCM 6-series and above high-nickel batteries in the European and American markets is forcing the purity of upstream raw materials to be upgraded. On the other hand, Indonesia plans to transform from a resource exporter to a new energy material production base, leading to an increasingly urgent demand for smelting and purification technologies.

As a core raw material in the purification process, sodium persulfate is ushering in a period of explosive demand. Both hydrometallurgical plants adopting HPAL technology and resource comprehensive utilization projects dealing with nickel slag are inseparable from the support of high-efficiency oxidative purification technology. The products of Fujian Zhanhua Chemical Co., Ltd. have passed application verification in multiple smelting projects and have been widely recognized for their performance in reducing compliance costs and improving product added value.

The transformation of Indonesia's nickel ore industry towards "standardization and quality improvement" is both a challenge and an opportunity. As a representative enterprise in the global sodium persulfate sector, Fujian Zhanhua Chemical Co., Ltd. will continue to rely on stable supply, professional technology and localized services to help Indonesia's nickel industry break through the quality bottleneck and provide a reliable guarantee of high-purity nickel raw materials for the global new energy industry.

Data Sources:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tWKWVJnNOC3TlI3hovqrIA

https://www.adamasintel.com/ev-battery-nickel-deployment-by-cathode-chemistry-and-region/