Salt Lake City: Livability in the 21st Century

US MAGNESIUM, LLC
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Top, left: Magnesium ingots packaged for transportation at the
US Magnesium plant.
Top, right: The US Magnesium production facility at Rowley, Utah,
commenced operations in 1972.
Opposite, top: Chlorine collection and spray drying equipment utilized in the
manufacturing of magnesium.
Opposite, bottom: Crucible hauler used to service the new generation
magnesium electrolysis cells at US Magnesium.
As the sole producer of magnesium metal in North
America, US Magnesium is one of only three production
sites in the world outside China and the former Soviet
Union. Magnesium metal is produced as high purity
ingots and as alloyed material for specialty applications.
The company also produces a family of chloride-based
co-products including chlorine for chemical uses, metal
production, and water purification. Calcium chloride and
iron chloride are also manufactured.
Magnesium metal, which is one-third the weight of
steel and two-thirds that of aluminum, is an alloying agent
industries use to reduce weight and fuel needs for automobiles
and aircraft, and in pharmaceuticals, military flares,
high-purity steel manufacturing, nodular iron production,
and reduction processes for titanium and zirconium.
The Great Salt Lake magnesium venture was conceived
and pursued as early as 1957 by John W. (Jack) Gallivan
and James E. Hogle through the H-K Company. After the
original production scheme proved technically infeasible,
National Lead Industries, led by Jeff Rowley, acquired an
eighty-four percent interest in the venture.
In the late 1960s, high purity brines of sufficient strength
were produced in the lake’s Stansbury Basin segment, using
solar energy to evaporate the brines into suitable plant
feedstock. Chemical equipment specifically designed for
magnesium chloride purification and electrolysis was
installed at the plant site northwest of the solar recovery
system. The largest spray dryers in the world were designed
and installed, and electrolytic cell technology was developed
from designs used in Germany in the 1930s.
The magnesium processing scheme in Utah began in 1968,
along with solar recovery of magnesium chloride from the
Great Salt Lake. In 1972 magnesium production was initiated
using a greenfield operating scheme (a proprietary process)
and Great Salt Lake-based raw materials.
The original process was difficult to pilot, so the company
solved technical problems as they appeared. These difficulties
became so extreme that operations ceased in 1975. The company
consulted with Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian magnesium
operation, reworking the production process and resuming
operations in 1976. Four years later, unplanned capital
costs and delays in reaching anticipated production rates
spurred National Lead to sell the operation to Amax, Inc.
Two plant modifications in the 1970s, related to boron and
magnesium oxide removal, improved magnesium chloride
purification operations. The direct current electrolytic cells
were also modified to accept cell feed available from the
Great Salt Lake.
A mid-1980s change in weather patterns led to a rapid rise
in the Great Salt Lake’s elevation. This resulted in failure of
the magnesium operation’s solar pond dikes in 1986. Solar
evaporation ponds near Knolls, Utah, took advantage of the
State of Utah’s pumping project, and provided raw materials
until the Stansbury Basin ponds were restored in 1992.
S A L T L A K E C I T Y — L i v a b i l i t y i n t h e 2 1 s t C e n t u r y
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