alt Hacker NewsThey are talking about lithium recovery, but there is a less exotic byproduct I'm interested in. One tonne (≈ 1 m^3) of seawater contains about 1.3 kilograms of magnesium, equivalent to about 4 kg of magnesite ore. Typical desal prices are on the order of $1 per tonne. Magnesite ore goes for about $100 per tonne, so the crude magnesium in a tonne of seawater is worth about $0.40, which could account for a substantial fraction of the desalination cost. (These numbers are very rough.)
Now you ask: why don't we just recover magnesium from brines if it's so great? Magnesium recovery from seawater isn't that easy: typically you have to treat it with some kind of alkali (often Ca(OH)2), so the cost is dominated by the extraction process (your alkali is consumed!), and you're competing with a pretty cheap ore. But if you have a solid byproduct, instead of a liquid, the options for magnesium recovery might be a lot more efficient, potentially offsetting the cost.
The fourth-most-prevalent ion, sulfate, might also be interesting, at least in a hypothetical post-petroleum future where sulfur as a byproduct of fossil fuel extraction is no longer "free". Sulfate is also annoying to extract from seawater, but again if we have a solid, the rules change.
As for the "table" salt itself, I think we'd quickly saturate (!) the market.
Calcining Mg(OH)₂ -which is what you find in seawater - converts the soft compound into magnesium oxide, a valuable mineral commonly used in refractories, catalysts, and ceramics.The Chemical Equation: \(Mg(OH)_2 \xrightarrow{\Delta} MgO + H_2O\)Temperature Requirements: You need to heat the magnesium hydroxide to a temperature range between 500°C and 900°C. Heating at the lower end (around 500°C) yields a highly reactive, porous form of nano-MgO, while heating above 1,200°C creates "dead-burned" MgO used in high-heat industrial bricks.The Yield: The weight of your final MgO product will be roughly 69% of the original Mg(OH)₂ mass, as the evaporated water accounts for the 31% weight difference. Already energy intensive. To get to magnesium ore is another step.