Thermokinetic study of magnesium hydroxide obtained from seawater

Abstract

In this paper, magnesium hydroxide has been obtained from seawater by a well-known industrial process which involves the chemical reaction between magnesium ions of seawater with dolomite lime to produce the magnesium hydroxide precipitate. Furthermore, the precipitate was modified by ultrasound of high intensity. The purpose was to obtain magnesium hydroxide with high purity and reduced particle size without agglomeration. The precipitated magnesium hydroxide is characterized by the particle size distribution determined by the laser scattering method in the range of 20 nm–2 mm, and by the SEM analysis. Likewise, in order to investigate the effect of particle size on the thermal stability, thermokinetic study of magnesium hydroxide samples was performed by non-isothermal thermogravimetry in an inert atmosphere at different heating rates. The gained thermogravimetric data were utilized for the kinetic analysis, which was performed by using the isoconversional Friedman method in combination with the multivariate nonlinear regression method. For each degradation stage of investigated samples, kinetic parameters (activation energy, pre-exponential factor and kinetic model) were calculated and compared.