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Wednesday, June 07, 2006 A Cleaner, Cheaper Route to TitaniumAn MIT startup is hoping to make titanium much more affordable. The benefit: lighter, more fuel-efficient planes. By Neil Savage
Titanium is as strong as steel, but weighs only about 60 percent as much. It's also highly resistant to corrosion, and handles temperature extremes well. So, not surprisingly, the aerospace industry wants to use much more of it in the next generation of planes, making them lighter and reducing fuel costs. But there's a hitch: at around $40 per pound today, titanium is expensive -- and the price keeps going up. Now a startup, Avanti Metal, using technology developed at MIT, hopes to commercialize a process that drastically reduces the cost of producing titanium, making more of it available for large, lighter-weight airplanes. The process, developed by MIT chemist Donald Sadoway, applies an environmentally benign, direct electrolysis method to make the metal. Titanium is naturally abundant. But processing titanium oxide found in the ground to make a usable metal is slow and produces toxic waste. "The price of titanium has gone through the roof," says Corby Anderson, director of the Center for Advanced Mineral and Metallurgical Processing at the University of Montana. "It's double what it was this time last year -- and last year it was pretty high." Jeffrey Sabados, president of the four-person Avanti, estimates that, based on production plans published by Boeing and Airbus, there'll be a 30,000-ton shortage of titanium by 2010. He claims that Avanti's process for refining titanium could slash costs to about $3 per pound. Then, if the metal then sells for even $25 per pound, an estimate he calls conservative, it's a huge potential profit. Since the early 1950s, titanium has been produced through the Kroll process. Manufacturers first make titanium chloride, which gets processed into titanium tetrachloride, and then mixed with magnesium, which draws out the titanium and produces chlorine gas. The result is a porous material, contaminated with magnesium salts, which requires further processing to remove the salts and make it usable for manufacturing. The process is so toxic that it's difficult to get the permits needed to build a new plant in order to expand production. Sadoway says their process is much greener. They mix titanium oxide with other oxides, such as magnesium oxide or calcium oxide; then they heat the mixture to about 1,700 degrees Celsius. This produces a bath of molten oxides, through which an electric current can be run. The electricity produces electrolysis, breaking the bond between the titanium and oxygen atoms, and the heavier titanium sinks. The result is a pool of liquid titanium at the bottom and oxygen bubbling out the top. The other molten oxides remain in place, acting as the electrolyte when more titanium oxide is added. "You just keep making more and more and more metal," Sadoway says.
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Comments
Guest (Hal Ade) on 06/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
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http://www.britishtitanium.co.uk/loader.html
British Titanium is a company formed to exploit the FCC titanium electrolytic production process, invented in 1997. Bti has had their pilot plant going very successfully.
From reading their above web-site, it seems their electrolysis process is much simpler than MIT's, and uses less energy.
I would strongly urge that you read their site before you come to any conclusions as to which is the most cost-effective process. It may
be MIT's, but it may also be Bti's, or yet another's.
Sincerely,
Hal Ade
Gatineau, QC.
Guest (richard) on 06/08/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (Martin G. Smith) on 06/09/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Each day as we walk the byways and flash along the highways of light,
there are those who are left standing, as the march to flight
goes by some to stop and wonder at the enormous potential at what
has been created.
But others who are left, standing in a rut at the side of the road,
a rut too soon to become an abyss.
So Then? What to do?
Have said before, too many times to count, yet shall say again, as often as need be,
until there is clarity in the air:
The time has come to put a fence at the top of the cliff, instead of a net at the bottom:
Thus giving a chance to build a bridge over the abyss.
http://abota.blogsource.com
Guest (Mark Shapiro) on 06/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (George Wilcox) on 06/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (Dr. OAL) on 07/14/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (bob) on 06/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
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would you be able to keep it from changing to much. im not meatlurgy expert but i would thing that having a heat level that constantly is changing might ruin the overall purity of the product metal
Guest (Martin G. Smith) on 06/07/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (Dr. OAL) on 07/14/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (Martin G. Smith) on 08/12/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Did Somebody forget to tell you, 'Not Possible' is no longer in use.
Guest (Guy Zaczek) on 06/13/2006 at 12:00 AM
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Guest (Martin G. Smith) on 06/14/2006 at 12:00 AM
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martin@redseven.ca
martyn newby on 09/12/2006 at 2:49 PM
1