Titanium: common in nature but expensive to manufacture

Titanium oxide was first discovered in 1791 by English scientist William Gregor. When studying ferrous sand sampled on a Cornwall beach, a mineralogist identified a previously unknown compound called “menakene land”. A few years later, German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovered a new metal oxide during experiments and called it “titanium”. Pure metal was only discovered in 1825 by Swedish scientist Jens Jacob Berzelius.

Titanium properties

Titanium is the 22nd element of Dmitry Mendeleev's table of chemical elements. It looks like steely and aluminum. It has a melting point of 1,664... 1,672°C and a boiling point of 3,330°C. It is characterized by increased resistance to aggressive environments and high temperatures, as well as good strength and plasticity.

Ti is a paramagnetic: it has the ability to magnetize in the presence of an external magnetic field, while maintaining a magnetic permeability value below one. But unlike similar materials, as the temperature increases, titanium's magnetic susceptibility does not decrease, but increases.

Titanium is considered the fourth most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, after gland, aluminum and magnesium. But, despite its prevalence, it has a high cost. This is due to the high costs of obtaining pure metal from ore, since Ti is naturally found only in the form of oxides and dioxides.

Pure metal is very difficult to weld and cut, and chips and dust remaining after processing the workpieces easily ignite at temperatures above 390... 400°C. But despite this, the material is widely used in various industries.

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Methods of obtaining

According to geologists, the mass fraction of titanium in the depths of the earth is approximately 0.57-0.58%, most of which is in the basalt shell and granite rocks. The main metal deposits are located in Japan, the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. But all deposits produce Ti exclusively in the form of titanium ores, from which pure metal is then obtained using one of the following methods:

• electrolysis — under the influence of high-intensity currents, titanium chlorides and dioxides are separated into elements, which makes it possible to obtain pure Ti;
• calcium hydride — metallic calcium is pre-saturated with hydrogen (H) and mixed with titanium dioxide, then in a vacuum, under the influence of high temperatures, the resulting hydride is divided into Ti and H, while washing away excess impurities from it with hydrochloric acid;
• magnesiothermal — first, the extracted titanium ore is processed into dioxide, which is then chlorinated and reduced with magnesium; after that, the resulting alloy is heated to 800°C and gradually cooled to 600°C: during the reaction, all impurities evaporate, leaving pure spongy titanium with many pores and voids; to obtain industrial metal, it is subsequently melted down;
• iodide — this method involves treating Ti dioxide with vapor I (iodine), followed by purifying the resulting composition by exposure to high temperatures.

To produce titanium of the highest quality, the iodine method of metal recovery is used. Other methods of processing titanium ore make it possible to produce only technical Ti.

The use of titanium in industry

Due to its high performance properties and low weight, titanium (both pure and in the form of alloys) is widely used in many industrial areas, including:

• in aircraft and rocket engineering — for the manufacture of parts of complex configuration, engine elements and other high-load units;
• in mechanical engineering — both when producing serial specialized equipment and when assembling units for individual orders;
• in shipbuilding — when constructing pipelines and as elements for ship cladding;
• in the food industry — in the manufacture of industrial household equipment and kitchen utensils (it became widespread due to its high sanitary and hygienic characteristics);
• in medicine — when creating prostheses and in the manufacture of surgical instruments.

In non-ferrous metallurgy, titanium is used both as a pure metal and as part of many precision alloys. Available in the form cold rolled strip, sheets and bars, circles, tubes, wire or thread.