5. Magnesium metal extraction
There are two main ways of producing magnesium metal:
the electrolytic route, from MgCl
2
;
the metallo-thermal route, from MgO, by reduction with Si or Al.
To perform molten salt electrolysis, it is necessary to operate with anhydrous or partially anhydrous MgCl
2
. However, in addition to eliminating impurities in solution, a major difficulty lies in dehydrating magnesium chloride. In fact, 6 molecules of water are bound to the chloride; of these 6 molecules, 4.5 can be removed by heating, but the remaining 1.5 molecules is bound water, which is difficult to extract...
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Magnesium metal extraction