Smelting Magnesium Metal using a Microwave Pidgeon Method

Abstract

Magnesium (Mg) is a lightweight metal with applications in transportation and sustainable battery technologies, but its current production through ore reduction using the conventional Pidgeon process emits large amounts of CO2 and particulate matter (PM2.5). In this work, a novel Pidgeon process driven by microwaves has been developed to produce Mg metal with less energy consumption and no direct CO2 emission. An antenna structure consisting of dolomite as the Mg source and a ferrosilicon antenna as the reducing material was used to confine microwave energy emitted from a magnetron installed in a microwave oven to produce a practical amount of pure Mg metal. This microwave Pidgeon process with an antenna configuration made it possible to produce Mg with an energy consumption of 58.6 GJ/t, corresponding to a 68.6% reduction when compared to the conventional method.

A Facile Formation of Vanadium(0) by the Reduction of Vanadium Pentoxide Pelletized with Magnesium Oxide Enabled by Microwave Irradiation

“…also reported carbothermic reduction of MgO with microwave irradiation to produce magnesium vapor . We have reported the reduction of calcined dolomite to metallic magnesium with ferrosilicon . These previous investigations clearly indicate the microwave irradiation in the presence of appropriate reducing agent such as magnesium is full of promise in production of metals whose oxide is difficult to be reduced.…”

Physical Insight to Microwave Special Effects: Nonequilibrium Local Heating and Acceleration of Electron Transfer

“…Solid-solid Reactions: Microwave-driven Smelting of Mg 14) Magnesium (Mg) alloys have low density and lightweight characteristics so are desirable replacements for Al alloys in the automotive industry as well as the aviation industry, because the subsequent reduction in the weight of components results in improvement in fuel economy 15) . Mg also has the highest internal energy density for electricity, so batteries using Mg as a negative electrode have higher power storage capacity than Li ion batteries 16) .…”

Smelting of Scandium by Microwave Irradiation

“…On the other hand, we were previously able to successfully obtain small amounts of magnesium metal by microwave irradiation. This process had a yield as high as 71% and consumed half of the energy used in the conventional process, which is known as the Pidgeon process [ 12 ]. In this report, we describe the application of the abovementioned process for the smelting of Sc metal by microwave irradiation and report the obtained results.…”