RESEARCH ON THE MANUFACTURING MAGNESIUM FROM THANHHOA DOLOMITE BY PIDGEON PROCESS

Quyen Vu Viet, Trang Vu Thi Thu , Nam Nguyen Duong , Binh Duong Ngoc , Huy Tran Duc

The magnesium and magnesium alloys has applied widely in different industrial aspects in Vietnam in the modern life. Especially, the products from magnesium alloys implementing in the automotive have increased rapidly since the car elements tend to be generated by the light alloys in order to save the fuel. However, in the current time, Vietnam has no factories to produce the magnesium to adapt the domestic demand although it owns an enrich resource of raw materials. This research indicates the possibility of using the dolomite ore in Thanhhoa – Vietnam to make the magnesium as well as evaluate the primary factors like recovering temperature, reducing agent rate, recovering time having effect on the reduction efficiency of Thanhhoa dolomite by metallothermic method in vacuum (Pidgeon Process). This is basic process, low investment and suitable for the small and medium scales in Vietnam. The experiment includes heating, indicating the chemical ingredients and recovering experiment on the dolomite after calcination (dolime) by using ferrosilicon. The thermodynamic model is created to estimate the recovering efficiency in the Pidgeon. The result shows that the CaO/MgO molar ratio of calcination dolomite in Thanhhoa is nearly 1.5 which is suitable to produce magnesium in the case of highly-required efficiency and pureness. Besides, the result from the furnace of the experiment is lower than the one in the model. The samples are set up to check the influence of the rate of ferrosilicon in the compound. The result indicates that the ideal efficiency reaches 85 % with 30 % ferrosilicon. Moreover, the study confirms that the optimal operating conditions in this process are recovering during three hours at 1200 °C and 100 Pa pressure. This result proves the potential application of Thanhhoa dolomite in the industry suitable with the current condition in Vietnam