Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: A new reduction process for producing titanium (Ti) with an ultra-low oxygen concentration directly from TiO 2 , employing yttrium (Y) as the reductant, was developed in this study.Several methods for the direct reduction of TiO 2 have been proposed to lower the cost of production of Ti.However, none of them have yet been applied industrially.In addition, Y has never been used as a reductant for reducing TiO 2 although its reducing ability is the highest among the reductants capable of reducing TiO 2 to Ti with low oxygen concentration.In this study, the reduction reactions of TiO 2 using Y/Y 2 O 3 equilibrium and Y/YOCl/YCl 3 equilibrium, employing various molten salts as solvents, were investigated.TiO 2 pellets and metallic Ti pieces were placed in several types of solvents along with sufficient Y and heated at 1300 K for 86 ks.When YCl 3 or CaCl 2 was used as the solvent, the TiO 2 pellets were reduced to metallic Ti.The oxygen concentrations in the Ti pieces after heating in YCl 3 and CaCl 2 were 90 « 40 mass ppm O and 350 « 60 mass ppm O, respectively.However, when NaCl or KCl was used as the solvent, a small amount of metallic Ti and a large amount of complex oxides were obtained.It is considered that the reduction reaction did not proceed sufficiently owing to the low solubility of the oxide ions in molten salts.It was experimentally demonstrated that Ti with an ultra-low oxygen concentration (100 mass ppm O or less) can be directly produced from TiO 2 by using Y as the reductant in an appropriate solvent.This method is expected to lead to the development of a new industrial process for the production of Ti with an ultra-low oxygen concentration directly from its ore.
Source: MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS
Authors: Takara Tanaka, Takanari Ouchi, Toru H. Okabe
Language: Esperanto
Subfield: Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
Field: Chemical Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3089148206