IMPROVEMENTS IN PLASMA RAWMATERIAL RECOVERY BY APPLICATION OF THE SELECTIVE IONIZATION CONCEPT

Plasma Raw Material Recovery refers to the possibility of obtain raw materials as pure elements starting from multiple not refined sources such as wastes, minerals and other sort of low grade materials. The concept has been proposed, for very specific applications and always not in its present and general form, in very different fields ranging from nuclear physics to space science. The process implies the ionization of the source materials and the separation of its constituents by electromagnetic means. Some simplifications in the process are possible in manipulating oxides. In this case it is possible to take advantage of the ionization gap between the oxygen and the other constituent metal to reduce the process required power as in the ”selective ionization” process theorized by NASA in the ’80s. In this paper the energetic feasibility of a direct separation of oxides using Plasma Raw Material Recovery implementing the Selective Ionization concept, hereafter called Enhanced Selective Ionization Method, is evaluated. The general characteristics of the process are described including its physical explanation. The energy required for the oxide dissociation and the separation is calculated separately for each of the main oxides present in the earth crust and hence an assessment of the energy required to separate into pure elements a combination of different oxides is performed along with the indication of the conversion yields