1970 Volume 86 Issue 989 Pages 553-558
We tried to shape and bake an electrode consisted of intimate mixture of titaniferous slag, pitch coke and pitch and to apply it to 20 amp. cell for extraction of magnesium metal, containing fused mixture of magnesium chloride, sodium chloride and fluorite.
The results obtained are summarized as follows.
1) Such an electrode showed high electric conductivity and mechanical strength enough to utilize as an anode instead of graphite anode in our experiment.
2) During the electrolysis, free chloride was scarcely detected in the gas collected from the anode room and titanium tetra-chloride was condensed in the water-cooled glass condenser, while magnesium metal was formed at the iron cathode. These facts show that titanium tetra-chloride formed by reaction of free chlorine with anode constituents is insufficiently dissolved into the bath.
3) The cathode current efficiency was lower than that in I. G. cell and the yield of titanium tetrachloride did not reach 60% of theoretical value. It may be due to various kinds of impurities, which come from falling of a part of anode constituents and dissolution of chlorides generated by chlorination of various oxides in slag into the bath. Therefore it will be necessary to find out suitable means to lessen harmful influences of these impurities on the electrolytic operation.
4) It will be possible to combine such an electrolytic extraction process of magnesium with titanium extraction metallurgy.
