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advancedresearch / environmental_mega_robotic_systems

Software for controlling mega robotic systems to deal with environmental problems - such as excess CO2 (pre-alpha)
MIT License
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Extracting magnesium from sea water #11

Open bvssvni opened 7 years ago

bvssvni commented 7 years ago

Calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) can be added to sea water to form magnesium hydroxide (Mg(OH)2).

MgCl2 + Ca(OH)2 → Mg(OH)2 + CaCl2

Magnesium hydroxide is insoluble in sea water and can be filtered out. It can then be reacted with hydrocloric acid (HCl) to produce magnesium cloride (MgCl2):

Mg(OH)2 + 2 HCl → MgCl2 + 2 H2O

Then, using electrolysis one can produce magnesium (Mg^2+).

bvssvni commented 7 years ago

One problem could be corrosion, but perhaps it could be immediately burned afterwards to produce graphene. Alternatively, the equipment containing the reaction or storing it could be destroyed and reused some way. There are also ways to reduce corrosion by controlling the presence of matter leading to the reaction.

bvssvni commented 7 years ago

By using solid oxide membrane technology, one can reduce costs by 40% per weight over the electrolytic reduction method, by using silver as liquid metal anode. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium