Overview of the magnesium metal production process
Dolomite is crushed by a crusher to produce qualified material (30-40mm). It is sintered in a rotary kiln, calcined to produce burnt dolomite, cooled in a cooler, ground into powder in a ball mill, pressed into balls in a ball press, crushed, mixed evenly with ferrosilicon powder (75% silicon) and fluorspar powder ( containing GaF2) = 95% mixed evenly to form a ball, loaded into a heat-resistant stainless steel reduction tank, placed in a reduction furnace, reduced at 1200-1250C and a vacuum of 1.33Pa to produce crude magnesium, and then the finished magnesium ingot is obtained after solvent refining, ingot casting, and surface treatment.
Production process of magnesium metal Introduction to the Pidgeon method: The Pidgeon method is a relatively typical method for producing magnesium metal. The raw materials required in this method are dolomite ore, fluorite, silica ore, coke and scrap iron. In the production process, the dolomite ore is now calcined in a rotary kiln to produce dolomite, which is then crushed, and the fluorite is crushed. The mixture of the two is placed in a mixing ball, and the silica ore, coke, and scrap iron are placed in an electric arc furnace for reaction and then crushed to generate ferrosilicon powder, which is put into a ball-making machine with the mixture in the mixer, and then put into a reduction furnace and added to the pellets containing ferrosilicon and fluorite. After the reduction reaction, magnesium crystals are generated, and then remelted and purified to produce metallic magnesium. The production cycle of this method is about 10 hours. The process flow is divided into three stages: preheating, low-vacuum heating and high-vacuum heating.
3 Production process of magnesium metal Introduction to the Balzano process: The Balzano process was developed on the basis of the Pidgeon process. The basic process flow is very similar to the Pidgeon process, but there are some differences. The main difference is that in the reaction process, dolomite and ferrosilicon are not pressed into lumps, but are heated directly using an electric heater. In this regard, it is a more energy-efficient method.
