Rapid plasma quenching for the production of ultrafine metal and ceramic powders

A hybrid method for hydrogen storage and generation from water

“…Further information on the production of Mg using the carbothermal process can be found in Refs. [26,27].…”

Primary magnesium production costs for automotive applications

“…An ultrafast plasma quench reactor developed by Plasma Quench Technologies, Inc. using a proprietary quench process that employs a Delaval nozzle (i.e., a rocket nozzle capable of converting thermal and pressure energy to kinetic energy very efficiently) can quench the reaction fast enough to prevent this back reaction. 13 This technology would be an attractive alternative to the capital-and space-intensive electrolytic process currently in use if the key technical problem of back reaction could indeed be solved at the commercial production level. Minemakers Australia is interested in using this yet-to-be commercialized carbothermic technology that was being developed by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research to recover magnesium.…”

“…25 For the rapid plasma quench carbothermic process, the capital cost has been estimated to be a little higher, at $3,225/tonne. 13 The SOM process plant is estimated to cost about $1,345/tonne for 63,000 tonnes annual production capacity. 25 Due to the simple nature and fewer processing steps in the SOM process, the capital cost in this case has been estimated to be significantly lower than the conventional electrolytic process and only 11 total direct labor person-years have been assumed for an annual magnesium production volume of 24,000 tonnes.…”

The carbothermic route to magnesium

“…Alternatively, metallurgical coke would be cheaper but require more purifi cation of the product. There is also signifi cant potential for reduction in equipment A number of processes based on carbothermic reduction have been proposed over the last century [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] including some large-scale industrial trials during World War II. 10,11 These developments have concentrated on two process routes: the "quench" route and the "solvent" route.…”

“…In this process, silicon, in the form of ferrosilicon, reduces magnesia from calcined dolomite under vacuum. The overall reaction can be written as: 6 2MgO (s) + 2CaO (s) + (xFe)Si (s) = 2Mg (g) + Ca 2 SiO 4 (s) + xFe (s) (1) The reaction is performed in batch mode within steel retorts that operate at around 1,200°C and a vacuum of [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Pa to produce approximately 20 kg of magnesium over 8-10 h. 4,6 The process suffers from high energy usage and low productivity but has the advantages of low capital costs and process simplicity. Ramakrishnan and Koltun 6 calculate that the cradle-to-gate lifecycle energy requirement of a typical Pidgeon plant is 354.5 MJ/kg magnesium ingot with a global warming impact of 42 kg CO 2 eq/kg magnesium ingot.…”