탄탈륨산화물 분말의 마그네슘 환원을 통한 탄탈륨 금속 분말 추출에 관한 연구

Abstract

Tantalum is one of the key rare-earth metals which has a greatly high melting temperature of 3290K and because of the superior elasticity and corrosion resistance, it has been briskly used as a raw material of alloy into a super-alloy applied in the military parts such as the jet engine, missile and so on. Moreover, the dielectric properties of the anodic oxide have allowed for its application as a raw material in the production of capacitors in the electronics industry. Accordingly in the parts and materials industry which has tantalum, researches to obtain high-purity tantalum raw materials are actively conducted. In general, the metal extraction process is extracted through hydrogen or carbon reduction using an oxide as a raw material. In the case of tantalum, tantalum oxide is used as a raw material. However, tantalum oxide is thermodynamically stable, and thus the reduction in ordinary carbon or hydrogen gas is theoretically impossible. Therefore, there is a research case of reducing this by using a special reducing agent such as calcium, aluminum or magnesium, and it is difficult to handle it at high temperatures when using calcium, and it is difficult to remove aluminum by mixing byproduct after reduction. Therefore, in this study, tantalum oxide, which can be reduced at a relatively low temperature, was reacted with magnesium to compensate for the drawbacks of the aforementioned smelting method. Magnesium oxide is produced as a by-product of this reaction, but this magnesium oxide is easy to remove. Therefore, in this study, pure tantalum metal was extracted through magnesium reduction to confirm the reduction behavior and to evaluate the structure, phase and composition of the reduced tantalum.