Reaction characteristics of magnesium production under argon flow by silicothermic reduction and numerical simulation of argon entrainment process

In this study, the reaction characteristics of reduction of calcined dolomite with ferrosilicon under argon flow to produce magnesium were studied by conducting experiments Pidgeon pellets were used to study the effect of reduced temperature, argon flow, and reduced time on the conversion of calcined dolomite reduction by ferrosilicon. The results show that the conversion significantly increases with the increase in the reduction temperature and reduction time. The conversion first increases and then decreases with the increase in argon flow. The highest conversion was obtained when the argon flow rate was 3 L·min^(-1), and a nearly spherical shape, nanoscale magnesium powder was obtained. Then the characters of the circulating argon entrainment process were numerically studied by ANSYS Fluent 17. A physical model of multilayer pellet arrangement was established, and a numerical calculation model of chemical reaction, radiation, heat conduction, and convection heat transfer was constructed. This confirms that high-temperature argon can effectively strengthen the heat exchange between pellets, improve the heat transfer efficiency, and facilitate the pellets to react quickly. When the conversion is 80%, the production efficiency increased by about 28.6%. In addition, the magnesium production efficiency showed an increase tendency with the increase of the argon inlet flow rate.

The silicothermic reduction of magnesium in flowing argon and numerical simulation of novel technology

The silicothermic reduction of magnesium was investigated by the non-isothermal thermoanalysis in flowing argon,while the traditional investigations of silicothermic process for magnesium reduction were carried out under vacuum conditions.Firstly,the thermal gravimetric(TG)and derivative thermogravimetric(DTG)characteristic of briquettes prepared with calcined dolomite,ferrosilicon and fluorite were characterized by the thermogravimetric analyzer(TGA)at different heating rates.The intrinsic chemical kinetic mechanism was identified as a formal chemical reaction with the Nth order type which showed apparent activation energy E and reaction order n were 290.168 kJ mol^(-1) and 1.076,respectively.Then,a novel technique of magnesium production without vacuum was put forward and a three-dimensional unsteady numerical model incorporating the chemical reaction,radiation,heat conduction and heat convection was established and simulated,which was verified by Pidgeon process and novel tech no logy.rIhe nu merical results showed that the cycle time of the novel technique could be reduced when the argon temperature was higher than 1343 K and the argon entrance velocity was over 0.05 m s^(-1).And the effect of the argon temperature on reduction degree was much larger than that of entrance velocity.

Minimizing pest aluminum in magnesium for the production of high-purity titanium

It is practically difficult to find titanium sponges with low and stable aluminum impurities on the market even though it is the precondition to prepare high-purity titanium. Analysis indicates that almost all the aluminum impurities in the titanium sponge are inherited from the magnesium used to reduce titanium tetrachloride. However, it remains elusive for decades why magnesium produced through the silicothermic reduction method contains a high content of aluminum impurities with large fluctuations. By recourse to thermodynamic calculations and comparative experiments, we demonstrate that fluorite, a material used as a catalyst in the silicothermic reduction method to produce magnesium, is the chief culprit for the pest aluminum and propose a mechanism to rationalize the observed phenomena. Our findings indicate that one practical way to produce qualified magnesium for the production of high-purity titanium is to abandon fluorite during the production of magnesium with the silicothermic reduction method.