According to the press office of the Moscow State Ferroalloy Institute of the Russian State Research University of Technology, scholars from the nonferrous metallurgy and gold department of the university have discovered a new method to reduce the production cost of magnesium used in the aerospace and defense industry fields.
The news explained that the traditional method is to obtain pure magnesium by electrolyzing the magnesium compound MgCl2 in a chlorinated environment, where magnesium is ionized and decomposed. Of the 100% of the current spent in the electrolysis process, only 80% was recovered, and the remaining 20% was wasted.
The head of research, Andrei Leshchenko, was quoted in the news from the Moscow State Iron and Steel Institute: "Under traditional conditions, the electrolytic magnesium-chlorine cathode releases liquid magnesium and the electrolytic anode releases gaseous chlorine. Because the magnesium droplets are mixed with the gas Together, they can easily come back together. By lowering the temperature of the electrolyte, we have found a way to prevent this process so that it releases solid magnesium. "
It turned out that if the temperature of the electrolyte was raised fairly quickly (within one hour) to make the magnesium melt away, and then the molten magnesium was quickly taken out of the electrolyte, less than 5% of the metal would be lost, and traditional technology would lose 20%. Metal. In this way, scholars can increase the output of magnesium by 15% and reduce power consumption by 5%.
Moscow State Iron and Alloy Institute promises that in the near future, scholars plan to study the issue of automating the entire process-from melting magnesium chloride in electrolytes to discharging molten magnesium.