Producing High Purity Magnesium (99.99%) Directly by Pidgeon Process

Abstract

Pure magnesium is the foundation of the entire magnesium industry. Over 90% of the pure magnesium on the market is produced in China using Pidgeon process. Even though the quality of pure magnesium has been improved significantly in the past decades, the majority of them is still suffering the following problems: The purity is only ~99.9%; there are still too many kinds of harmful impurity elements with their content fluctuating greatly in an uncontrollable manner. The impurities can be passed to magnesium alloys and degrade their properties significantly, especially their corrosion resistance ability. This leaves people an impression that Pidgeon process cannot produce high purity magnesium directly. As a consequence, it has long been accepted that producing high purity magnesium requires additional processes, which is usually costly and time-consuming. After analyzing the impurities’ source of the Pidgeon process, we developed a new technique that can produce high purity magnesium (99.99%) directly by Pidgeon process without significantly increasing the costs. The application of this new technique is expected to benefit the entire magnesium industry.