Enrichment of Magnesite and Usage to Obtain Magnesium Fluoride

Abstract

© 2022, Turkish Chemical Society. All rights reserved.Magnesium is the sixth most abundant element, constituting 2% of the total mass of the earth's crust. It is a metal that exists only in chemical compounds, and generally in carbonate and oxide forms. The most important mineral forms are magnesite (MgCO3), dolomite (MgCO3.CaCO3), and carnallite (KCl.MgCl2-6H2O). Magnesium metal, which is obtained from different sources by various methods, has an important place in the industry. There are approximately 16 billion tons of dolomite and 110 million tons of magnesite reserves in Turkey. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of idle magnesium clay raw material (in Eskişehir) for the production of magnesium fluoride and thus to propose a chemical process for the relevant raw material to the industry. For the experiments, a 10 kg sample was taken and after the whole was ground to 75 µm size, XRF, XRD, and DTA analyzes were performed. As a result of XRF analysis, it contains 44.28% MgO. For XRD analysis, it was determined that it is magnesite with MgCO 3 structure, and that it also has dolomite and chlorite group mineral structures. MgF 2 was created by employing HF from the relevant raw material as a result of the study, and it was discovered that the efficiency was higher in the raw magnesite experiments.