3

How does titanium occur in nature?

Is it available as a native metal or only in the form of ores?

Which precesses are typically used to convert the natural resources to the solid metal?

Any hints on where to find further information are welcome. Thank you very much in advance.

IronMan
  • 31
  • 3
  • http://www.chemguide.co.uk/inorganic/extraction/titanium.html#top for purification. I have no idea where you'd find it. – chipbuster Jan 22 '14 at 20:41
  • Ok thank you for your answer. Hope it is useful – IronMan Jan 22 '14 at 20:45
  • It is very useful and a great geeky website which I like thank you very much – IronMan Jan 22 '14 at 20:46
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about obtaining a material, and not about the properties of said material. – ManishEarth Jan 23 '14 at 05:32
  • 3
    @ManishEarth To be honest, all he would have had to ask was "where does Titanium typically reside" which would convey 'properties' rather than 'obtaining said material' yet I don't see how this would affect the right answer in any way. – LordStryker Jan 23 '14 at 13:29
  • @user123126 This site isn't about being "geeky", whatever that means! I took the liberty to rewrite the question completely. I hope that's ok with you. – Klaus-Dieter Warzecha Jan 25 '14 at 09:21
  • @LordStryker true. We may want to revisit that policy on meta :) – ManishEarth Jan 25 '14 at 09:53
  • I think the edits made it answerable (as I was able to) –  Jan 25 '14 at 15:10

1 Answers1

5

Titanium is found as an ore, according to the Titanium Occurrences Wikipedia page, specifically, the 2 most economical ores are:

Ores of titanium

Rutile $\ce{TiO2}$ and Ilmenite $\ce{Fe^{2+}TiO3}$

Extraction of titanium metal from ore

According to the chemguide page Titanium,

Titanium can't be extracted by reducing the ore using carbon as a cheap reducing agent. The problem is that titanium forms a carbide, TiC, if it is heated with carbon, so you don't get the pure metal that you need. The presence of the carbide makes the metal very brittle.

Rather, the ore is chlorinated, then reduced as shown in the schematic from the webpage Titanium Exposed (the chemical processes are included):

enter image description here

Chemguide states that either $Mg$ or $Na$ can be used in the reduction stage, which adds to the cost of production as they need to be extracted themselves.

Asides from the links used in this answer, another good resource is Chemistry of Titanium (Professor John Lancashire - University of the West Indies)

  • Sponge is only partway to metal ; It usually goes through a vacuum - arc remelt to make the ingots, blooms or billets. ( I am not familiar with Ti industry terminology.) – blacksmith37 May 19 '18 at 01:07