Magnesium from Seawater // Magrathea’s Mission to go Back to the Future
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 พ.ค. 2024
- Advancements in Magnesium Alloys and Magnesium Thixomolding will lead to huge increases in Magnesium demand. How will we increase the magnesium supply to meet that demand? In my view, the best way is by extracting magnesium from seawater by going back the future to resurrect Dow and Norsk Hydro's processes - and Magrathea's doing exactly that.
Video #1 on Entering the Magnesium Era - • Unlocking Magnesium fo...
Video #2 on What Thixomolded Magnesium Is - • Idra Enters the Thixom...
Video #3 on Why Thixomolding is Better than Al Gigacasting -
Also, this is the old Dow footage which I thought was excellent:
• INDUSTRY ON PARADE T...
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Timeline
00:00 Introduction
02:59 A Brief History of Magnesium Production
05:25 The Dow Process for Magnesium
08:28 The Pidgeon Process for Magnesium Production
10:41 Dow vs Pidgeon Process
15:01 The Tide is About to Turn
16:56 Magrathea’s Process for Extracting Magnesium from Seawater
21:51 Summary
Intro Music by Dyalla: Homer Said - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Thanks for this. As the son of a Dow engineer, I was born in the shadow of the Dow plant in Freeport Texas. My father was always proud of what Dow had accomplished in WWII and referred to it as the plant that had won the war. The manipulation of the magnesium market by China had huge negative impacts on the people employed by Dow and the prosperity of Freeport area.
Thanks for the anecdote! I love hearing things like this.
Jordan, I always learn from your work. The new process for extraction from sea water sounds promising. I also appreciate your response to the those who fear negative impacts on sea water extraction. Much like former students who were concerned about negative environmental impact from wind energy. I always tried to impress on students that all choices will have some negative environmental "externalities." Being a NIMBY is a lazy response to proposed changes in technology. The work is measuring and comparing those externalities across all alternative choices and figuring out how to minimize the negatives.
🎯
Link to the full Magnesium Production video. Fascinating to consider why each country's production was rising and falling at various junctures in time: th-cam.com/video/xgbLrbUcGIs/w-d-xo.html
Shout out clute, tx where I'm at right down the road.
Just a note about the ecological impact of magnesium production from seawater... the calcination step is likely the most harmful part... we can't just go around dredging osyter beds and expect that to not have an imact. That step would definitely have to be shifted to scale this technology.
agree. limestone might be an alternative better suited to mass production. on the other hand, over the long term, a company could have an oyster farm as par t of its operation. you can get shells, meat, and pearls, but the main thing oysters are for is they filter and clean the water.
@@arbivark Jordan's guessing (based on a whole lot more knowledge than most of us) that they have an efficiency in their new process that allows them not to require dredging up of oysters. He said as much in the video. They get the calcium directly from the seawater as well I think he said.
Are there any potential synergies that could arise if there were a facility were designed to extract multiple things from seawater at the same time, such as magnesium, lithium, uranium, and fresh water? Or would the processes necessary to extract each of those be not compatible with each other?
My view would be yes, because a lot of the energy used is to dehydrate the solution.
But I'd have to look into the economics of each element
@@thelimitingfactor I wonder if putting these near desalination plants would make it more efficient. The output from desalination plants should be fresh water and sea water with higher concentrations of everything.
A desalination plant produces fresh water and brine. The brine is a waste product with about twice the salinity of seawater.
Using that brine as a feedstock would save energy, and would slightly reduce the quantity of waste brine that needs to be pumped away.
If Mg truly does start to replace Al in many applications and Mg demand increases ~10X, then that would require processing about 5B cubic meters of seawater per year. That amount of seawater contains about 15M kg of uranium (15,000 metric-tons). I've heard that uranium sorbents are getting near perfect extraction of uranium in seawater after a few hours of exposure. This would equate to about 1/3 of global uranium production. Nice side hustle.
Glad to see they are not dredging oyster shells. Dredging oyster shells is basically strip mining the ocean floor and is extremely damaging to the environment.
Thanks again, Jordan, for the quality of your presentations. And a belated congratulations on passing 100k subscribers.
Thanks Doug!
Thats a very interesting subject. I like the relatively environment friendly process.
When seeing that there was a production in Norway and reading IG Farben it got even more interested. IG Farben was a company formed from I think 8 chemical companies around 1925 in Germany. After WW2 being in Liquidation (well I thought ist still the case) for 50 years after WW2 (four large chemical companies were separated. It seems with IG Farben (or the owner before 1925) there was the knowledge/process of making magnesium in large quantities especially for the lightweight military planes. As we had already seen the Volkswagen Beetle had some important engine components made out of Magnesium. There was a larger scale plant since 1886 in Hemelingen, near Bremen North Germany called: "Aluminium und Magnesium Fabrik". Further the material Elektron (alloy) where there is a Wikipedia entry. That book could be good to know: "Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine".
Oh cool! I didn't know about the background on IG Farben. And sounds like an interesting book 👀
@thelimitingfactor There was some ingenuity like making fuel out of coal on a relatively high production level. Forced (jewish) labor was 'used'. Most of them did not care about human life. Some of them were found guilty at the Nuremberg trials after WW2.
'..merger of six chemical companies: BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron [de], and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer.
IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry.
Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937, and three company scientists became Nobel laureates:
Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods", and
Gerhard Domagk in 1939 "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil"
...Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich", in the 1940s the company relied on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz,[11] and was involved in medical experiments on inmates at both Auschwitz and Mauthausen. One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas Zyklon B, which killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust..
The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945 and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted. However, by 1951 all of them were released from prison early after the U.S. military instituted good time credits in its war crime program.
What remained of IG Farben in the West was split in 1951 into its six constituent companies, then again into three: BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst.'
For a scientist, an engineer and even an employee there is the question whom to serve.
On Archive (Org) there is the book but for unclear reasons its cannot be read.
Given the process involves liquids and extreme temprature changes... I'd imagine heat exchangers could dramatically reduce the energy costs.
I wonder if Japan might be an interesting place for magnesium production. No bauxite reserves (so aluminum is imported), lots of coastline for seawater, heavy shift toward renewable energy. Ytterbium can probably be extracted from seawater, too. Economy is declining so they want to increase exports. And has FTA with the US.
But nobody beats Norway in cheap electricity, with so much hydro capacity. I wouldn't be surprised if they start back up in the near future.
Quebec could challenge Norsk for cheap hydroelectric power. QC has access to both Atlantic and Arctic Oceans…
Thanks for this video. That's the kind of thing that gives me hope and keeps me sane. Opportunity while being better for the environment and last but not least an improvement to quality of life.
Sometimes the future seems murky, but there's always people working on making it bright !
I feel the same way! A few people in the front of the train pulling us all forward
It seems to me that the advantages of the seawater process are duplicated by using brine as an input. Limestone could substitute for oyster shell.
If I understood the video, the new process does not involve the need for either oyster or limestone.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom you are right. I posted before the end of the video. Brine from Salt Lake, Salton Sea or oil wells would still be a concentrated source.
Great work as always!
Jordan,
Great job as usual!!!
Thanks for addressing the sea life issue.
UUh that title
"chef kiss"
Perfection
🤜🤛🤠
As usual,Jordan, another jewel created!
THANKS JORDAN 🤗 AND YOUR SUPPORTERS ,FOR SHARING THIS INFO 🧐💚💚💚
Thank you for this page of history, very interesting and promising.
Bear in mind that magnesium is very easy to machine. Whereas chip adhesion to the tool, tool wear, product surface finish, machine horsepower and rigidity of the milling machine are the normal... limiting factors (sry), this is not the case for magnesium. The limiting factor in magnesium is speed. Just speed.
You will see a lot of products made out of magnesium if it becomes cheaper than aluminum; aluminum will no longer be the default choice for casting and machining. Infact, I imagine aluminum will be used primarily for corrosion resistance, thermal conductivity, reflectivity and slightly better strength to weight ratio if used in optimized designs.
aluminum alloys are stronger per weight than magnesium, but as aluminum is stronger and denser, you have to use thin/hollow pieces of it, requiring a lot of processing. Magnesium, being lighter and weaker, tends to be used in thick and solid pieces that need less processing. So the _strength per weight_ favors aluminum, but the _strength per weight _*_per net cost_* of magnesium is better if raw magnesium can be made as cheap or cheaper than aluminum. Although there are other technical reasons too, this also explains why TLF says that magnesium alloy components are lighter than aluminum; sure, tesla *_COULD_* make them lighter with aluminum, but no one would buy cars with subframes that cost $50K+ wholesale.
Thanks for the well-considered comment!
Yup magnesium and most of its alloys machine extremely cleanly. The only catch is that you cannot use water based lubricants while cutting it, moist magnesium chips are very dangerous if they ignite, water is an acceleration agent for combustion and they release hydrogen as they burn.
Thanks for the video. Just a small point - both solar PV and wind power have a 10 year payback if you exclude government subsidies
Good point!
this is a great series pointing out the potential for Mg. The main issues with the proposed magnesium electrolysis process is that it requires large plants with a CAPEX exceeding $20k per ton which makes for a difficult ROI. There are now alternative thermal processes using electricity that have a 4-5 times lower CAPEX and a production cost & carbon footprint on par with aluminum reference Tech Magnesium
Wow super fascinating stuff as always, Jordan. Very insightful observation about the shift away from low cost labour and toward more secure supply chains and trade among closely allied nations.
Glad to hear it man! 🤠
Excellent Jordan! Thanks.
You're most welcome!
Great presentation as usual!
Mg production looks like one of those processes that would benefit from direct heating via a molten salt fission reactor.
I wonder what the effects of radiation are on Mg.
Liquid Florid Thorium Reactor (LIFTR) would supply process heat in the range of 600 to 900ºC, not radiation. @@TheEvilmooseofdoom
love it, one of your best videos, and you make really grate ones..
Thanks man! I enjoyed making it
In fact, you got me going started down the road to making large magnesium parts, I've made wheels in the past, over 25 years ago but now I am obsessed with subframes @@thelimitingfactor
Magnesium Oxide sands can be easily mined. There is a new process that turns the sand into magnesium powder which can be used for 3D printing.
Jordan,
Your focused, intelligent analysis of complex systems (and history) gives you an oracle-like insight into the future! Hope your example will motivate analysts in other tech industries to follow suit. Great work! 👍
Glad to hear it man! I hope so too!
Awesome. Mind blown.
Magnesium is most commonly mined from seawater. They treat well filtered seawater with NaOH and that makes Mg(OH)2which settles out. Alternatively Na2CO3 can be used to precipitate the carbonate. The next step is to convert the carbonate or hydroxide then separate it from the fused chloride, a small amount of potassium or sodium chloride is added to get the MgCl2 to melt as a stable mixture.
Very hopeful !
I was interested when you mentioned wheels. Because we don't need to wait for Tesla to agree; somebody could start a factory to make magnesium wheels for teslas.
I really love these videos. My battery work mostly revolves around alkali solid state batteries, but I try to stay updated on other kinds of batteries as well.
Just one request: if you would be able to, please link your sources in the description. I'd love to be able to read the primary sources of your work.
Hello! Glad to hear it.
Wherever I've directly used or cited information, I put it on the page.
Where it's opinion based on the information presented, I preface it as such.
Otherwise, like my comments about Chinese subsidies of Coal, I don't provide references because it can be googled because there's a lot of information about it.
Hope that helps!
Thanks Jordan! Now I am a fan of magnesium - would love to have cheap, sustainabily produced lightweight magnesium wheels!
Two questions come to mind. First, would the economics of sourcing from high concentration waters like that of the Great Salt Lake and the Salton Sea improve the economics? Second, sense the aforementioned sources already have extraction of potassium and lithium, wouldn’t that also improve the economics?
In both cases, I would guess probably
It’s now not-so-Great Salt Lake City - due to humans wasting water…
@@FrunkensteinVonZipperneck which for our purposes makes it even more desirable.
Thank you! Once again, this is a clear and concise explanation of how magnesium is produced, and why China cornered the market for the time being. The startup (Magrathea) does seem very promising, I look forward to any further details on their process. Oyster shells do seem a difficult input to scale. Interestingly, a process/technology change to magnesium is also far more environmentally friendly. That's a real win for everyone.
You're most welcome! And glad you enjoyed it 🙌🏼
Tks for that Bud.
I have been looking into how magnesium was made since l saw your episode on Edra injection moulding.
🤜🤛
Would be very interesting to see this happen. I wonder if Magrathea has looked into the thermal sand battery or graphite battery concepts for use in California to capture and store heat cheaply for their processes.
Thanks Jordan. Love these videos. Just want to check, do you have any financial interests in magrathea?
No
I would invest if I could, but you have to be accredited, which basically means you need to be a millionaire...
I'm not a millionaire, lol
Thanks Jordan, great video. Question: how about the comparison of the production of
Sure thing!
20kg parts should be cheaper with thixomolded Mg (see the last couple of videos in the series on Thixomolding). Not sure about other materials.
I need to research carbon fibre too
Thanks!
Thank you!
It's best if the process of extracting magnesium from sea water is coupled with, 1st water desalination (as a water treatment process for domestic and industrial uses via reverse osmosis) and secondly, the extraction of sodium from the resulting brine (for use in sodium ion batteries).
Will the labor needed in the Pidgeon process be replaced by humanoid robots? If yes, how soon?
No, not anytime soon.
But even if they did, it's still fundamentally an awkward process.
Great video, I wonder if instead of using straight sea water if anyone has considered using wastewater from desalination plants. I’m sure the process would be similar but the concentration of minerals in the input stream would be higher.
Yeah, brines or desal plants might improve things. Magrathea will likely start with brines
One byproduct of the pigeon process is calcium carbide that can be used to make acetylene
Dysan Sphere? A little ambitious are we? How about start with Ringworld instead? 🙂
😁
Stepwise precipitation would use much less energy than the Dow process. Salt farms already throw away vast quantities of MgCl solution. It might be easier to clean that up.
Without knowing the energy requirements, I'll still opine that the modified process seems like it could benefit from an offshore implementation, as the primary inputs are seawater, energy and a fixed store of chlorine cycling from reagent to gaseous product and back. Implement a production line in something the size of a containership and base it at an offshore wind/solar farm in the Gulf. A couple benefits are that a dedicated wind/solar farm (site power) needn't be connected to the mainland and so may be built much further offshore (regulatory+), vessel-based production lines are much easier to scale than a land-based facility, and a marine implementation avoids about a dozen years of permitting process and NIMBY legal battles for a land-based facility (not to imply no permitting, just less arduous).
I would still think bring that to the shore would be far easier and far less of a logistical problem than moving the process off shore.
Jordan, what type of market potential do you see Magrethea having? Personally I am very interested in Magrathea as a possible investment in the coming years. One of my favorite investments has been a metal company that has delivered tens of thousands of percent return on investment over the decades. I hope Magreathea takes a look at what they've done and are doing bc metal is a commodity type cut throat business and for them to have done as well as they have could teach valuable lessons to an upstart company
If they're able to scale it and deliver the material costs they're predicting, as big as ALCOA.
But, as you know, that's a big IF!
I'd like to invest, but right now it's privately funded.
I was looking for Magrathea IP on their website, but was not able to find anything disclosed. My guess is they are going to isolate Mg by precipitation as Mg(OH)2 with electrogenerated NaOH via the membrane process which has matured since the Dow days. Then big magic happens in the conversion of the wet Mg(OH)2 to anhydrous MgCl2 which is needed for the electrolysis in molten state. For example, in the classical electrolysis, electrolysis of partially hydrated MgCl2 leads to unwanted coproduction of hydrogen, raising energy needs. So any technology that saves energy on the way from magnesium hydroxide to anhydrous magnesium chloride is likely the most important part. I can think for example of formation of MgCl2 complexes with other ligands than water, and thermal decomposition of those to anhydrous MgCl2 and free ligand which is recycled again.
Hopefully they should have some patents published soon 😁
Thanks for the comment! Interesting stuff
banana peels also have lots of magnesium
Sourcing Mg from seatwater is even more viable than I thought, if concentrations are indeed that high! I was expecting it to be found there in far more trace amounts.
Me too! Big surprise
Go Magrathea!
Coffee time! :)
lol, thanks man. I'll try to find a flat white somewhere here in ohio 😉
Is magnesium as recyclable as aluminum?
Yes
....the schleem, is then, re-purposed for later batches.
😂😂😂
I will believe it when I see it. When companies have to put up solar panels to greenwash their process and make it seem innovative, then that's a red flag for me. No patents filed; means they probably have nothing special.
I remember vaguely decades ago a startup in my country (the Netherlands) that was going to make magnesium from seawater. I don't think it ever materialised. They planned to make bicycle frames from it. The Netherlands has chlorine factories. I think magnesium can be produces as a byproduct of that process. That to me sounds more efficient than to make only magnesium from the seawater. Another similar proces is lithium mining, here too I wouldn't be surprised if you can combine it with magnesium extraction.
Another upcoming technology is carbon sequestration. Minerals like olivine can be used to sequester carbon from carbondioxide (enhanced weathering). A magnesium and iron-rich solution is a byproduct of this process. A higher concentration source solution can make the whole process more efficient.
When I look at the process the Chinese are using, I see an opportunity there: the minerals are already on site and the process they use produces CO2 as a byproduct.
13:19) 31 million deaths + 10x as many made ill = major contribution to population decrease….
Such an amazing thing. So, this means desalinization can turn seawater not only into fresh water for humans, but also the remaining brines can be a resource instead of being considered s waste and provide more than just lithium for batteries, I also knew it was possibe to extract uranium from seawater for nuclear reactors and now this is the most interesting part about all this: to also be able to extract magnesium to build more efficient BEVs!
But what worries me is the time. I was hoping all that would be already happening by 2025 so Tesla could use Magnesium to make the more affordable smaller newer model and scale mass production ASAP. Maybe Tesla would acquire this magnesium startup (Magrathea?) to make things happen faster just like they acquired Maxwell for their dry electrode tech? Or maybe they will keep vertical integration by developing the same tech by themselves? I just hope Elon will see this on X and say something about this tech.
Tesla's current presses can be retrofitted for magnesium thixomolding 😉
@@thelimitingfactor Thank you! Well, seems they are able to use the magnesium, that's awesome news indeed, but the question that remains is when will Tesla finally enter the mining industry? Because they could be producing fresh water, lithium, uranium and magnesium as well! Elon has a golden opportunity here!
It seems a shame to melt the metal twice before it's formed into Mg parts. Couldn't they save a lot of energy by co-locating a few major parts manufacturers near the refining plant that can use the molten metal for casting straight from the refining furnaces instead of cooling them to ingots first?
Funny, the US screams competition and capitalism, until they're out competed. ;)
[edit] That said, a great video with excellent info and insight as usual.
Dead sea Mg has 35 times more Mg concentration in comparison to normal sea water. Israel for centuries producing Mg metal from the dead sea. the reserves of Mg in the dead sea is enough for 10000years with current world needs
One day everything from Magnesium, Lithium, Uranium, and everything in between will be extracted from seawater. A billion+ year supply. But it will likely require all these extraction techniques combined in a multi-step process to be economical.
True for most, but for Mg it's already proven to be economic
@@thelimitingfactor Presumably this process is much more efficient with desalination brine. Whoever can extract just those three elements is going to become very wealthy. Throw the Uranium in a liquid fueled fast reactor and you have enough energy to power the whole process a hundred times over.
How do they subsidy coal in China ? Russia, Australia supply coal to China - is this a subsidy ?
OK, I confess - Russian railroad does provide subsidized tariffs for coal. But coal constitutes 46% of all rail cargo, so some discounts are inevitable. But Russia export coal for metallurgy... Which one is used for Magnezium production - cheaper energy coal ?
You can google that, which is why I didn't go deeper
lots of magnesium in sewage too
I need cheap raw materials, I am ready to add more machines and capability to my growing micro manufacturing business, but FFS I cannot compete with Chinese imports. I can't even buy the raw materials for what they sell finished parts for.
Dead sea Mg concentration is huge. and has enough Mg for 10000years
Oh no. Feds subsidizing MAGAnesium…
There is one HUGE problem with this. Magnesium ions in sea water are necessary to neutralize CO2 dissolved in sea water. Magnesium bicarbonate only exists in aqueous form, and every magnesium ion dissolved in sea water helps neutralize two CO2 molecules.
Mass extraction of magnesium from the sea is not a good idea, because it can lead to intense acidification of the oceans. Every ton of magnesium extracted out of the ocean results in the equivalent of 1.8 tons of CO2 no longer being balanced by that magnesium.
In fact, the major efforts to use the ocean as a carbon sink involve using terrestrial sources of and calcium magnesium, such as basalt gravel and waste rock from mining overburden to neutralize CO2 and send it into the ocean as magnesium bicarbonate and calcium bicarbonate, since both magnesium and calcium bicarbonate are actually beneficial to the oceans.
I think they have a plan for this from memory. Alex is pretty thorough. But thanks for commenting, I may be wrong and maybe he'll chime in if he sees the comment.
@@thelimitingfactorFor info on ocean carbon drawdown, and how the ocean already currently serves as a huge carbon sink, look up some of the work of Dr. Greg Rau. He is the foremost advocate and researcher of this topic. I know him personally.
#1 This video mentions a lot of "Chinese government subsidy" but does not provide any related material.
#2 It sounds like the solution to grow the Mag production is for the US government (and other countries) to learn from Chinese government and subsidize the industrial and revive an old process (through subsidy). While this is valid approach, it is sad to see free market spirit failing to a more communist way of doing business.
True for most of the materials, but for Mg, it's already proven to be economic.
Seawater only contains 1.2 gram of magnesium per cubic meter.
That's per kilogram not per cubic meter
Use the power of Google