Patent ID: 7217402

Claim:
A method of producing metal chlorides in a chlorinator vessel, comprising; establishing an upper layer which is initially of liquid CdCl 2 on a lower liquid Cd layer, adding chlorine gas to said lower liquid Cd layer to form new liquid CdCl 2 where said newly formed liquid CdCl 2 has a lower density than liquid Cd and is essentially insoluble in liquid Cd, thus rises into the upper layer, submerging a porous basket agitator and a lower opening of a slug chute, which is positioned above said basket agitator, in said upper layer initially of CdCl 2 , selecting a metal to form said metal chloride such that a free energy of formation of the metal chloride is more negative than that for CdCl 2 per chlorine atom and where a boiling point of said metal chloride is greater than that of CdCl 2 resulting in the metal chloride being less volatile than CdCl 2 or Cd, depositing said selected metal used to form said metal chloride through said slug chute into said basket agitator, contacting liquid CdCl 2 in the upper layer with said metal in a sufficient time to react said metal with the liquid CdCl 2 to form a metal chloride and Cd in the upper layer, coordinating a rate of chlorine addition with a rate of metal addition to control a combined exothermic reaction ensuing from the addition of Cl 2 to Cd and the formation of the metal chloride so that a temperature associated with said upper layer is in a range of 600° C. to 700° C., settling the formed Cd from the upper layer after the contacting step to recombine the formed Cd with the lower liquid Cd layer and removing the remaining upper layer from the chlorinator vessel, and employing a distillation process to separate the newly formed metal chloride from the removed upper layer.