CARBOTHERMAL PRODUCTION OF MAGNESIUM: CSIRO’S MAGSONIC? PROCESS

摘要

Carbothermal production has been recognized as conceptually thesimplest and cleanest route to magnesium metal, but has sufferedfrom technical challenges of development and scale-up. Work byCSIRO has now successfully demonstrated the technology usingsupersonic quenching of magnesium vapor (the MagSonic?Process). Key barriers to process development have beenovercome: the experimental program has achieved sustainedoperation, no nozzle blockage, minimal reversion, and safehandling of pyrophoric powders. The laboratory equipment hasbeen operated at industrially relevant magnesium vaporconcentrations (>25% Mg) for multiple runs with no blockage.Novel computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of the shockquenching and metal vapor condensation has informed nozzledesign and is supported by experimental data. Reversion below10% has been demonstrated, and magnesium successfully purified(>99.9%) from the collected powder. Safe operating procedureshave been developed and demonstrated, minimizing the risk ofpowder explosion. The MagSonic? Process is now ready toprogress to significantly larger scale and continuous operation.