If you live near Freeport Texas or in China here is a way to make money.

 

The last Pidgeon process magnesium plant is in Freeport Texas. Most magnesium in the world now comes from China. The Pidgeon process uses a lot of ferrosilicon. Ferrosilicon is an alloy of iron and silicon that can cost $1270 per ton. In the scrap metal industry often people throw out transformers. Transformers are ferrosilicon cores wrapped with copper. Someone in the scrap industry needs to collect the cores separate the copper. Then sell the remaining cores on back into the steel industry as ferrosilicon or on to the magnesium producers. Most of it now just goes into plain steel scrap. Or at least that's what my scrap dealer tells me. I bring him a box of stripped cores and he says to me with a very straight face. “Oh that's steel. It's magnetic.”