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General comment This study used the actual operation data in the ore mining and beneficiation stages of an enterprise in Xinjiang, which is a major source of cobalt in China. Data of the cobalt concentration stage came from the experiment. Data on refining used the annual operating data from a cobalt refinery in Southeastern China in 2019. This company is one of China’s five largest cobalt refineries. The technology selected in this study is hydrometallurgical refining, which is consistent with all the five projects. This technology has been mentioned in many papers as an international mainstream cobalt refining technology. The Chinese process-based life cycle inventory database provides secondary data support to ensure consistency with China’s status quo . Production data for several chemicals are not available (e.g., Z-200, O-ethyl potassium carbonodithioate, carboxymethyl cellulose, butyl xanthate, butylamine aerofloat, P204, and P507).China’s state quo (e.g., waste disposal, transportation, and energy) was used to adjust the European data to reduce the regionalized effect from Europe. |
