Smelting Magnesium Metal using a Microwave Pidgeon Method

Magnesium (Mg) is a lightweight metal with applications in transportation and sustainable battery technologies, but its current production through ore reduction using the conventional Pidgeon process emits large amounts of CO2 and particulate matter (PM2.5). In this work, a novel Pidgeon process driven by microwaves has been developed to produce Mg metal with less energy consumption and no direct CO2 emission. An antenna structure consisting of dolomite as the Mg source and a ferrosilicon antenna as the reducing material was used to confine microwave energy emitted from a magnetron installed in a microwave oven to produce a practical amount of pure Mg metal. This microwave Pidgeon process with an antenna configuration made it possible to produce Mg with an energy consumption of 58.6 GJ/t, corresponding to a 68.6% reduction when compared to the conventional method.