Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new method to produce titanium with minimal oxygen content, significantly reducing the production costs. Their study introduces a cost-effective process using yttrium to lower oxygen levels to 0.02% by mass.
Titanium ranks as the ninth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, but products made from pure titanium are rare due to the high cost of extracting oxygen from titanium ore. Lowering these costs could prompt manufacturers to leverage titanium’s beneficial properties more widely in their products., have developed a procedure that reduces the cost of producing titanium that’s almost entirely free of oxygen.
A critical step in the researchers’ protocol is reacting molten titanium with yttrium metal and yttrium trifluoride or a similar substance. The end result is a low-cost, solid, de-oxygenated titanium alloy. The reacted yttrium can be recycled for further use. A highlight of the researchers’ work is that even titanium scrap that contains large amounts of oxygen can be processed in this manner.