Cost Affordable Developments in Titanium Technology and Applications

Abstract

Titanium is the “wonder” metal, which makes sense as the material of choice for a wide variety of applications. However, because of its relatively high price- a result of extraction and processing costs- it is used basically only when it is the only choice; with the caveat that titanium has a bright “image” which can lead to use even when the economics are unfavorable. The major thrust in the area of titanium technology has been aimed at achieving cost reduction rather than developing alloys with enhanced properties. This paper will overview the potential areas which are amenable to cost reduction and present some applications of titanium and it’s alloys.

Development of the Fray-Farthing-Chen Cambridge Process: Towards the Sustainable Production of Titanium and Its Alloys

“…50 kWh/kg Ti 6 ), environmentally unfriendly (> 2 kg CO 2 per kg Ti) and a semi-batch process. Thus, there have been continuous research and industrial efforts to improve or replace the Kroll process [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] as summarised in the supplementary Table S1.…”

Purification of crude titanium powder produced by metallothermic reduction by acid leaching

“…Titanium and its alloys exhibit an exclusive combination of distinct properties such as low density, good corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility (Oosthuizen, 2011;van Vuuren, Oosthuizen and Heydenrych, 2011;Froes, 2012;Fang et al, 2018).These properties are required to produce longer life components capable of mitigating environmental problems (Hansen and Gerdemann, 1998). However, the high cost of titanium and its alloys compared to competing materials like stainless steel and aluminium limits their widespread use in the full range of potential applications (Froes and Ashraf Imam, 2010;Oosthuizen, 2011;van Vuuren, Oosthuizen, and Heydenrych, 2011;Peters et al, 2012).…”

Laser-Sustained Plasma (LSP) Nitriding of Titanium: A Review

“…These properties have led to titanium being referred to as a "wonder metal" [5], with current and future applications in the aerospace, chemical, automotive, and biomedical industries, spurring recent research into titanium alloy development to achieve desired functionalities and properties [6][7][8]. However, the widespread use of titanium in the industry has been hampered by the high costs incurred during extraction, processing, and machining, making titanium more expensive than steel or aluminum [9]. Apart from this economic disadvantage, titanium suffers from a serious engineering drawback, namely, its poor tribological properties.…”