Magnesium extraction from seawater

[tusavisionSubscriber]

hssp : / / w ww.magnesium. com /w3/forum/read.php?thread=1564

To my knowledge there only two commercially used today. Electrolytic and Ferrosilicon
are the two used. The later is also called magnetherm or pidgeon process. Dow used the electrolytic
cell principal of extraction since 1916. In 1941 Dow began to use seawater as its source of
unlimited supply of magnesium.
Seawater contains about 0.13% magnesium. The seawater is mixed with dolime and placed in
large settling ponds where insoulable magnesium hydroxide settles to the bottom. The slurry is pumped from the pond
to filters where it is concentrated for additional processing. Hydrochloric Acid which is
prepared from chlorine produced in the magnesium electrolytic cells is added to the magnesium hydroxide to produce
a magnesium chloride solution. The solution is evaporated in dryers to produce a granular magnesium
cholride product feed for the electrolytic cells. In the electrolytic cell the magnesium cholride is decomposed by an
electric current into the molten magnesium and chlorine gas.
The magnesium metal is drawn off and cast into primary ingots. It can also be alloyedwith aluminum and zinc. The
chlorine is collected and converted to hydrochloric acid for recycling in the process.Dow at one time had a plant in
Freeport Texas using this process. It has since been closed and is now a parking lot.

Hope this helps

Steve Louk
Cleform Tool Corp.

Now, personally: I don’t think that seasteading can compete with land based operations for any electricity expensive process, however a byproduct of our desalination for drinking water will be a FUCK TON of salt. Aside from Salt Farmer being a badass job description: pretreating the water for magnesium mining seems prudent. The fact that Magnesium Air Batteries have an enourmous energy density is a nice perk.

hssp:/ / 20 2.11 4.8 9. 60 /resource/pdf/2509 . pdf

Speaking of which: DARPA is hungry for a flying submarine. The mission requirements are parallel to my unsinkable lifeboat idea.

hssp: / /en.wikipedia. org /wiki/Flying_submarine

hssp:/ / ww w. livescience. com/technology/060301_spy_plane. h tml

hssp:/ / gizmodo . com /5180773/the-13-million-deep-flight-super-falcon-flying-submarine

Which raises the question: can the “grow your own coral” material make a single man pressure hull?

Remove spaces from linx since this forums spam filter sucks.

[Author]

Posts