Zhigang Zak Fang

Abstract:

Titanium metal production has been a focus of the research community around the world for several decades. The strong affinity of titanium to oxygen makes the conventional Ti metal production by either the Kroll or the Hunter process energy intensive. A new approach is designed to prepare high-purity Ti metal powder from commercial purified TiO₂. Pure TiO₂ is subjected to Mg reduction, followed by a de-oxygenation process using Mg. Both the Mg reduction and the deoxygenation processes are carried out in hydrogen atmosphere. It can be shown that hydrogen destabilizes Ti-O system and enables Mg to reduce oxygen content in Ti to extremely low levels. The processes are also conducted in molten salt medium. It has been successfully demonstrated that this two-step hydrogen assisted Mg reduction process, i.e. the reduction plus deoxygenation, can produce low oxygen Ti metal powder with oxygen content as low as a few hundred ppm.