titanium processing

titanium processing, the extraction of titanium from its ores and the preparation of titanium alloys or compounds for use in various products.

Titanium (Ti) is a soft, ductile, silvery gray metal with a melting point of 1,675 °C (3,047 °F). Owing to the formation on its surface of an oxide film that is relatively inert chemically, it has excellent corrosion resistance in most natural environments. In addition, it is light in weight, with a density (4.51 grams per cubic centimetre) midway between aluminum and iron. Its combination of low density and high strength gives it the most efficient strength-to-weight ratio of common metals for temperatures up to 600 °C (1,100 °F).

Because its atomic diameter is similar to many common metals such as aluminum, iron, tin, and vanadium, titanium can easily be alloyed to improve its properties. Like iron, the metal can exist in two crystalline forms: hexagonal close-packed (hcp) below 883 °C (1,621 °F) and body-centred cubic (bcc) at higher temperatures up to its melting point. This allotropic behaviour and the capacity to alloy with many elements result in titanium alloys that have a wide range of mechanical and corrosion-resistant properties.

Although titanium ores are abundant, the high reactivity of the metal with oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen in the air at elevated temperatures necessitates complicated and therefore costly production and fabrication processes.

History

Titanium ore was first discovered in 1791 in Cornish beach sands by an English clergyman, William Gregor. The actual identification of the oxide was made a few years later by a German chemist, M.H. Klaproth. Klaproth gave the metal constituent of this oxide the name titanium, after the Titans, the giants of Greek mythology.

Pure metallic titanium was first produced in either 1906 or 1910 by M.A. Hunter at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York, U.S.) in cooperation with the General Electric Company. These researchers believed titanium had a melting point of 6,000 °C (10,800 °F) and was therefore a candidate for incandescent-lamp filaments, but, when Hunter produced a metal with a melting point closer to 1,800 °C (3,300 °F), the effort was abandoned. Nevertheless, Hunter did indicate that the metal had some ductility, and his method of producing it by reacting titanium tetrachloride (TiCl₄) with sodium under vacuum was later commercialized and is now known as the Hunter process. Metal of significant ductility was produced in 1925 by the Dutch scientists A.E. van Arkel and J.H. de Boer, who dissociated titanium tetraiodide on a hot filament in an evacuated glass bulb.

In 1932 William J. Kroll of Luxembourg produced significant quantities of ductile titanium by combining TiCl₄ with calcium. By 1938 Kroll had produced 20 kilograms (50 pounds) of titanium and was convinced that it possessed excellent corrosion and strength properties. At the start of World War II he fled Europe and continued his work in the United States at the Union Carbide Company and later at the U.S. Bureau of Mines. By this time, he had changed the reducing agent from calcium to magnesium metal. Kroll is now recognized as the father of the modern titanium industry, and the Kroll process is the basis for most current titanium production.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

A U.S. Air Force study conducted in 1946 concluded that titanium-based alloys were engineering materials of potentially great importance, since the emerging need for higher strength-to-weight ratios in jet aircraft structures and engines could not be satisfied efficiently by either steel or aluminum. As a result, the Department of Defense provided production incentives to start the titanium industry in 1950. Similar industrial capacity was founded in Japan, the U.S.S.R., and the United Kingdom. After this impetus was provided by the aerospace industry, the ready availability of the metal gave rise to opportunities for new applications in other markets, such as chemical processing, medicine, power generation, and waste treatment.

Ores

Titanium is the fourth most abundant structural metal on Earth, exceeded only by aluminum, iron, and magnesium. Workable mineral deposits are dispersed worldwide and include sites in Australia, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, Russia, Norway, Malaysia, and several other countries.

The predominate minerals are rutile, which is about 95 percent titanium dioxide (TiO₂), and ilmenite (FeTiO₃), which contains 50 to 65 percent TiO₂. A third mineral, leucoxene, is an alteration of ilmenite from which a portion of the iron has been naturally leached. It has no specific titanium content. Titanium minerals occur in alluvial and volcanic formations. Deposits usually contain between 3 and 12 percent heavy minerals, consisting of ilmenite, rutile, leucoxene, zircon, and monazite.

Mining and concentrating

Although workable known reserves of rutile are diminishing, ilmenite deposits are abundant. Typical mining is by open pit. A suction bucket wheel on a floating dredge supplies a mineral-rich sand to a set of screens called trommels, which remove unwanted materials.

Typically, the minerals are separated from waste material by gravity separation in a wet spiral concentrator. The resulting concentrates are separated by passing them through a complex series of electrostatic, magnetic, and gravity equipment.