Technology


Magnium raises $3.24 million to progress green magnesium technology

Technology




Magnium Australia has raised $3.24 million as it continues to scale up its CSIRO-developed technology for carbon neutral processing of the lightweight metal magnesium. 

The Australian Financial Review’s Street Talk column reports that the raise will support a new plant to prove Magnium’s process can run continuously, with completion planned for December.

According to Magnum’s website, its carbothermal reduction technology is able to produce magnesium ingots, using renewable energy, of 99.8 per cent purity, and it plans to initially make 100 tonnes per annum. This would amount to half of Australia’s annual use of the metal, with almost all of this currently imported from China.

The process has been under development by the CSIRO since 2003, and came about via a breakthrough in rocket science, “which enabled unprecedented efficiency and low emissions for the production of magnesium through a carbothermic reduction – when carbon is using carbon as a reducing agent in metal oxides,” its website explains.

“Rocket nozzles ensure supersonic shock quenching of magnesium vapour. The application of carbothermal reduction of magnesium combines proven technology with a novel application.”

According to The AFR, Magnum’s pitch to investors involved a future scenario where Australia made 50 per cent of the world’s magnesium, an opportunity worth somewhere between $253 billion to $297 billion based on today’s prices.

A pre-feasibility study for a green magnesium plant by the company at Collie, Western Australia was completed earlier this year. 

Funding of “up to $2 million” was announced last month by the WA government for “a further feasibility study into the provision of magnesium hydroxide as a byproduct of desalination” at Collie, and “conducted by Water Corporation in partnership with the South West Development Commission and the state Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation.”

Picture: Magnium

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