(Max Bredig Award in Molten Salt and Ionic Liquid Chemistry) Exploring Novel Uses of Molten Salts

Abstract

Molten salts have been used successfully in processes for the extraction of metals, high temperature batteries and fuel cells for decades which give confidence to the fact that other processes can be explored which can be sufficiently exciting to be of practical importance. In this paper, the following relatively new processes will be discussed: electro-deoxidation where metal oxides are electrochemically reduced to metals, alloys, intermetallic compounds, combined reduction and electrorefining which can be applied to the reduction and purification of oxycarbides of many metals, cathodic protection of Group IV elements in order to prevent oxygen pickup during high temperature processing, the use of lithium intercalation into graphite to create carbon nanoparticles and nanotubes which can be used in lithium ion batteries, and, finally, ion exchange reactions.