Word: ferrosilicon
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...even when it ends, Western involvement will depend on whether the eventual winners are receptive to foreign influence or are isolationist hard-liners. Thermo Electron, a Waltham, Mass., company, is negotiating to build in China a $110 million co-generation plant that would turn out electric power and ferrosilicon metal by reusing the same fuel (coal). But, says chief executive George Hatsopoulos, "if the situation reverted to anything like the ((1960s)) Cultural Revolution, we wouldn't want to have anything to do with China...
Several of the new magnesium makers (Ford among them) use the little-known ferrosilicon process developed by Canada's Lloyd Montgomery Pidgeon. Requiring minimum plant-construction time, the Pidgeon process has been recommended by the National Academy of Sciences as promising the quickest yield with the least risk. Unlike electrolytic methods, it does not require great power. Since it uses dolomite (magnesium-calcium carbonate, one of the most plentiful limestones), plants can be almost anywhere...
...Ford, dolomite is powdered, calcined (burned in a kiln) and mixed with ferrosilicon-an electric-furnace product of silicon and iron long used in steelmaking. The mixture is pressed into briquettes and charged into furnaces. When these are heated under vacuum, magnesium vapor is given off, and it crystallizes as on removable steel sleeves...
...Advantages. Now on its way, Permanente may some day have advantages over other magnesium producers: its raw material costs average 4? a Ib. v. 14? for the ferrosilicon process used by Union Carbide & Carbon; its power costs are below those for the "sea water" process used by No. 1 U.S. magnesium-maker Dow Chemical. In the head-to-head battle of metals (steel v. aluminum v. magnesium, etc.) which will surely follow the Armistice, this will mean easy going for Permanente, tougher sledding for its competitors...
Plants for the ferrosilicon process can be built in jigtime (six months to a year). The power economy is no less an advantage, since power is getting scarce. Last week WPB authorized a big new aluminum plant for Brooklyn, a city whose power rates are among the highest in the U.S. Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia also got new aluminum plants. Reason: these cities all have excess kilowatt capacity, and capacity, not price, is the important thing...