The Dai Group published their work “Mechanochemical Synthesis of High-Purity Anhydrous Binary Alkali and Alkaline Earth Chloride Mixtures” in the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry (I&EC).
A direct synthesis route for high-purity, anhydrous binary salt mixtures has been developed. This atom efficient, solvent-free process is easily scalable, with the potential to produce salt mixtures that meet the purity standards required for industrial heat transfer and nuclear applications. The essence of the methodology lies in mechanochemical synthesis of carnallite precursors that can mitigate the hydrolysis of MgCl2·6H2O under direct heating. Each dehydrated salt carnallite was then analyzed for purity and oxide content through subsequent powder X-ray diffraction, and strong acid titration. This process presents a more effective alternative route compared to previous methods for obtaining low-oxide, high-purity chloride salt mixtures.
Phillip Halstenberg, graduate student, oversaw all experimentation and writing of this manuscript. Dmitry Maltsev was responsible for pXRD
measurements and data evaluation. Ellie Kim and Dianna
Nguyen performed titrations and calculations to quantify oxide
content as part of their undergraduate research. Sheng
Dai advised and oversaw all experimentation.
