Coverage by Vísir

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An innovation-driven company with major ambitions for magnesium production from seawater aims to conduct its first pilot-scale manufacturing tests in Iceland next year. A precipitation reactor developed by an Icelandic engineer is expected to be the key to producing the metal in a far more environmentally friendly and efficient way than current methods allow.

Recent reports have highlighted the extensive plans of Njörður Holding ehf. to build a magnesium plant at Grundartangi at an estimated cost of around thirty billion ISK. The facility could create hundreds of jobs and produce roughly 50,000 tonnes of magnesium metal per year, equivalent to about five percent of global output.

The project is based on technology developed by Stefán Ás Ingvarsson, CEO of Njörður Holding, at his private lab as a industry member at Stanford University in the United States, enabling the direct extraction of magnesium hydroxide from seawater.

The method is expected not only to yield a purer metal than traditional production routes that make use of seawater, but also to require forty percent less energy. It would furthermore avoid the toxic waste streams and carbon-dioxide emissions associated with the process currently used in China.