Currently there are two types of minerals in China: wolframite and scheelite. Tungsten is a kind of rare metal and significant strategic material. It is called "heavy stone" from ancient China. In 1783 tungsten was named by the Spaniard DE Puria. The tungsten content in the crust is 0.001%. Generally the tungsten ores are formed for the activity of granitic magma. Tungsten is a silver-white shiny metal with high melting point and high hardness after smelting. There are more than 20 types of tungsten minerals and minerals containing tungsten which are discovered.
Wolframite is a kind of mineral with dark gray, reddish brown, light brown black, brown and iron brown. It has semi-metallic luster, metallic luster and resin luster. It is mainly used for refining tungsten and producing tungstate. It is low in reserve, but rich in mineral, and easy to mine and process, it accounts for more than 90% of the tungsten output.
Scheelite is a kind of transparent to translucent mineral with granular or massive shape, it accounts for about 70% of the global tungsten reserve. Its color changes with the molybdenum content, the common colors are white, gray, light yellow, light purple, light brown, light red, green, etc. with grease luster or glass luster. The ore is luminous with color of light blue to yellow fluorescence under ultraviolet light. It was discovered in many areas such as Dayu of Jiangxi province, Dashunlong of Hunan province, Wenshan of Yunnan province etc. Most of them are in the form of mineral sand and can be obtained by washing with heavy sand. Although the reserve is abundant, the ore is not rich and low in quality. Most ores are difficult to separate, output only accounts for about 10% of the total output. In China the reserve is discovered to has 3.76 million tons, it occupies 71% of the whole tungsten reserve, but as material composition of some large and super large tungsten polymetallic deposits is complex, disseminated grain size is fine, metallurgical technology is not been completely solved, thereby the mining output at this stage is still low.
