Titanium production by magnesium thermal reduction in the electroslag process

Abstract

Titanium is widely used in specific applications due to its high strength, low density and good chemical stability. Despite it is one of the most abundant elements in the earth’s crust, it is very expensive, because production of pure metallic titanium is very complex. Kroll process is the way how most of the titanium is produced nowadays. Shortages of this process are that it is batch process and it is very energy exhaustive, because titanium sponge material after reduction reaction needs complex post processing to isolate pure titanium. In this work we describe and experimentally investigate technology for Ti production from titanium tetrachloride using combined Kroll and electroslag process. Such process allows to achieve better reaction product separation by molten slag and process can potentially be continuous, thus technological process to produce metallic titanium can be significantly shortened.