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What are the smelting techniques of titanium?

Although titanium was discovered, it was not mined and used until 1910, when American chemist Hunter reduced titanium tetrachloride with sodium at 700-800℃. For the first time, 99.9% of the metal titanium was obtained, but the total was less than 1 gram. This method is known as Hunter's method. However, the reducing agent used by Hunt's method is expensive sodium, which can only be used in small amounts for the preparation of titanium. Can't meet mass production. In 1932, Kroll, an American scientist from Luxembourg, succeeded in reducing titanium tetrichloride with relatively cheap calcium at temperatures of more than 800 degrees Celsius, which led to commercialization. A few years later, he replaced the calcium with magnesium, which is easier to keep. This method is still used today and is known as the Kroll method.

To 1948, the United States DuPont company discovered the magnesium reduction - vacuum distillation method into a ton of titanium production of a new process, which marked the beginning of industrial production of titanium. The process is divided into three steps: in the first step, carbon dioxide generates titanium tetrachloride TiO2+Cl2+2C= 2Co +TiCl4; in the second step, titanium tetrachloride TiCl4+2Mg → Ti+2MgCl2 is reduced by magnesium. The magnesium chloride and excess magnesium in sponge titanium are removed by vacuum distillation to obtain pure titanium. The third step, coming out of the reactor, is a porous, sponge-like gray substance called titanium sponge.

Titanium sponge is melted into liquid in an electric furnace before it can be cast into titanium ingots. Since the reaction takes place at high temperatures, titanium requires a lot of energy in the production process, which is why it is expensive.

Because the quality of titanium metal prepared by the Krall method is better, the production safety is higher. Therefore, each country in the world is using magnesium reduction - vacuum distillation method to produce sponge titanium. We can easily find that it took more than one hundred years from the discovery of titanium element to the production of pure titanium. And titanium also gradually into People's Daily life, increasingly by people's attention, the use of more and more widely, to a certain extent to get real use.