Word: magnesium
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...small quantities the pure metal was used for photographers' flashlights, for fireworks, for star shells, as a scavenger to remove oxygen from other metals while molten, in organic synthesis. In compounds it was used medicinally for milk of magnesia and Epsom salts. But today the fact that magnesium is only two-thirds as heavy as aluminum and less than one-fourth as heavy as steel has brought it into great demand. And from almost everything except green leaves chemists are now extracting the pure metal-some 24,000 tons this year in the U.S., twice last year...
Mining the Ocean. A year ago magnesium was extracted from only one source, Michigan's brine wells; by only one enterprising producer, Dow Chemical Co.; and by only one method, electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride recovered from salt water. This is a chemical trick so old that it is known as a prior art and is not patentable. Last winter Trust-Buster Thurman Arnold's division of the Department of Justice sued Dow as a monopoly, but the chief reason that Dow had magnesium all to itself was that before the U.S. began rushing warplanes there...
Until this spring, Dow drew all its magnesium from its inexhaustible brine wells at Midland, Mich. From these it is now extracting magnesium at the rate of 12,000 tons a year-26 times as much as in 1929. This spring Dow tapped a new source which has stirred everyone's imagination : it began mining sea water for magnesium at a great $15,000,000 plant at Freeport, Tex., which by year's end will be sucking in 12,000,000 gallons a day (enough water for a city of 120,000) and turning out 50 tons...
While Dow has been pioneering the extraction of magnesium from water, others have been studying how to extract magnesium from rock. TVA scientists are working on the Carolinas' abundant magnesium silicate called olivine, of which 27% is recoverable magnesium (in contrast to sea water's .1%). When this ore is mixed with hydrochloric acid, magnesium chloride is formed which can be treated by electrolysis just like that from water. Because olivine is so rich in metal and TVA power sells cheaply, experiments have been launched at Georgia Tech in the hope of making this a major U.S. source...
Danger Up, Price Down. A radically different "carbothermic" process is being tried in the West on two other very common ores, brucite (Mg(OH)2) and magnesite (MgCO3). When either of these is baked it forms magnesium oxide, and the trick is first to vaporize this by heating it to 3,800° F. in the presence of carbon and then cool it to around 380° in 1/1000th of a second with a blast of cold gas. During the heating, the carbon takes the oxygen away from the magnesium, and during the cooling the magnesium is precipitated...