What is the brief history of magnesium metal?
Magnesium metal from the discovery to the present experience 196 years of history (1808~2004), industrial production has been 18 years (1886~2004) history. During this 118 years, the development of magnesium was divided into three stages:
(1) Chemical method stage.
In 1808 the British scientist H. Davey isolated magnesium from magnesium chloride. In 1929, French scientist A. Busi used potassium or sodium vapor reduction molten magnesium chloride to get metal magnesium. It was not until the 1860s that Britain and America began to chemically obtain a little more magnesium. This stage lasted 78 years (1808-1886), but did not form an industrial scale.
(2) Stage of molten salt electrolysis. In 1830, The British scientist M. Faraday first obtained pure magnesium by means of electrolytic melting magnesium chloride method. In 852 P. Benn carried out a more detailed study of this method in the laboratory until industrial production of magnesium began in Germany in 1886. After 1886, the demand for magnesium increased. Since 1970s, the dehydration of magnesium chloride in brine in HCl gas - electrolysis method has become an advanced technological method.
(3) Thermal reduction stage.
Due to the increasing demand for magnesium, the production of magnesium by electrolysis alone can not meet the demand for magnesium, so many scientists on the basis of chemical method, the smelting of metal magnesium by thermal reduction method. Vacuum thermal reduction process of magnesium chloride was started in 1913. The first reduction of magnesium chloride using silicon as A reducing agent was made in 1924 from several X anhydrin A. φ. Allah owed shev the realization. In 1932, Anji hu and Arahun Shev used al - si alloy as reducing agent to reduce magnesium chloride. In 1941, LM pijiang, a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, established a pilot plant in Ottawa for smelting magnesium by calcination of dolomite by reduction of ferrosilicon, and achieved success. In 1942, the Canadian government established a silicon thermal magnesium plant at the Halley Dolomite mine with an annual capacity of 5000 metallic magnesium. Pijiang smelting of magnesium metal has become the second largest industrial smelting of magnesium metal method.
In 1947, France began to study the process flow of semi-continuous production of silicon thermal smelting magnesium metal. In 1950, an expanded test furnace was established. In 1959, the first semi-continuous thermal silicon magnesium plant with a daily output of 2t magnesium was built. Semi-continuous smelting of magnesium (i.e., slag conductive semi-continuous reduction furnace) has become one of the advanced technological methods in magnesium industry.
