Comparative evaluation of energy and resource consumption for vacuum carbothermal reduction and Pidgeon process used in magnesium production

With the fast development of the application of magnesium based alloys, the demand for primary magnesium is increasing dramatically all over the world. The Pidgeon process is the most widely used process for producing magnesium in China, but suffers from problems such as high energy, resource consumption and environmental pollution. While the process of vacuum carbothermal reduction to produce magnesium (VCTRM) has attracted more and more attention as its advantages, but it has not been well-practiced in industrial applications and there also is no comprehensive and quantitative analysis of this process. This study quantified the flows of resource and energy for the Pidgeon process and the VCTRM process, then compared and analyzed these two processes with each other from three aspects. The VCTRM process results in 63.14% and 69.16% lower of non-renewable mineral resources and energy consumptions when compared to the Pidgeon process, respectively. Moreover, the low energy consumption (2.675 tce vs. 8.681 tce) and material to magnesium ratio (2.953:1 vs. 6.429:1) of the VCTRM process, which lead to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (8.777 t vs. 26.337 t) and solid waste generation(0.522 t vs. 5.465 t) with a decrease of 66.67% and 90.45%, respectively. Results indicate that the VCTRM process is a more environmentally friendly process for magnesium production with high efficiency but low cost and low pollution, and it shows a good potential to be industrialized in the future after solving the bottleneck problem of the reverse reaction.