Enrichment of Magnesite and Usage to Obtain Magnesium Fluoride

Abstract

Magnesium is the sixth most abundant element, constituting 2% of the total mass of the earth's crust. It is a metal that exists only in chemical compounds, and generally exits in carbonate and oxide forms. The most important mineral forms are magnesite (MgCO3), dolomite (MgCO3.CaCO3) and carnallite (KCl.MgCl2-6H2O). Magnesium metal, which is obtained from different sources by various methods, has an important place in the industry. There are approximately 16 billion tons of dolomite and 110 million tons of magnesite reserves in Turkey. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of idle magnesium clay raw material (in Eskişehir) for the production of magnesium fluoride and thus to propose a chemical process for the relevant raw material to the industry. For the experiments, a 10 kg sample was taken and after the whole was ground to 75 µm size, XRF, XRD and DTA analyzes were performed. As a result of XRF analysis, it was determined that it contains 44.28% MgO. As a result of XRD analysis, it was determined that it is magnesite with MgCO3 structure, and also it has dolomite and chlorite group mineral structures. As a result of the experiments, MgF2 was obtained by using HF from the relevant raw material, and it was determined that the efficiency was higher in the experiments performed with raw magnesite.