Magnesium metal is a green engineering material with great potential for development and application.The paper introduces magnesium smelting technology and its development status.On the basis of analyzing the development trend and the new technology application,the technical and economic analysis of two calcination processes is made.It is concluded that there are two main processes for the production of magnesium metal.The silicothermic process(pidgeon method)is the mainstream technology in china.At the same time,the replacement process of the traditional pidgeon method is being studied,and the vertical tank process is the improvement direction of the current pidgeon method.By comparing the two processes,the former has low investment intensity and mature application,but the latter has obvious advantages in produc-tion cost and energy consumption.