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A Cleaner, Cheaper Route to Titanium
Burlap writes "Using technology developed at MIT, 4-person startup Avanti Metal hopes to reduce the cost of producing Titanium from the current $40 per pound to a mere $3. The article discusses how a special combinations of oxides and electrolysis separates the titanium metal from the Earth's abundant titanium oxide ore."
http://www.techreview.com/printer_friendly_article .aspx?id=16963
Yeah, the ad... not very helpful.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I can have brass, silver, gold, and titanium pantalones! And perhaps a big metal unit as well!
Seriously, though, to read the article, I had to "Copy Link Location" and paste it into the address bar, and it worked.
Great article, too. I love hearing stuff like this.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
No one found this earlier. The Hall-Heroult Process for aluminium is basically the same,and has been known for well over a century.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Nobody uses the Titanium. Servers just use a MD Pteron if they want price-performance. And Onroe is just around the corner. Even cheaper Titaniums aren't worth the bother. Ntel can't drop the product line as a matter of face, but consumers just aren't buying it.
I always love articles like this when they compare the price of MAKING something with the price of SELLING something. Titanium's sold on a market sort of like oil... prices fluctuate based on demand more than they do based on the cost of production.... if the price of titanium is $40 this year, and was half as much last year... last year it was $20, and I'm SURE that people were making a profit selling that, so it was produced for probably a maximum of $15, probably more like $10/lb.
So yes, this saves money... but it needs to be done in a large scale, 1st. I don't know how they come up with a cost/lb estimate that they consider to be more than VERY ball park estimate... $3 could be $6.
Its substantial savings, but its not like we're going to be able to start planning our houses with titanium frames in a few years or anything. And that's assuming that demand doesn't keep skyrocketing above supply... in which case we could have the same price (or more!) regardless of how much it costs to produce titanium.
Tim
Sweet! I'm sure this will likely have a significantly higher impact on pretty much all products as is, but this will affect me in a slightly different way. I'm one of the few that make chainmail as a hobby. Titanium chainmail is significantly lighter, rusts less, etc, etc. Significantly better for metalcraft than stainless steel or galvanized steel or anything like that in my opinion.
:}
So, having cheaper working materials = excellent for people like me
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
Guess I'd better move my money from titanium futures to gold and silver.
If the cost of making Titanium drops that much, everything Aluminium can be replaced by Titanium, plane, racket, bike... mmm... Well, not everything...
Now everyone can own a batmobile! Ok minus the jset engine. On a more serious note it might be nice for laptops, so that they will never break when dropped ever again.
Philosophy.
Now I can buy the colorful lights for the warp drive engine instead spending all the money on plating the hull with expensive titanium. Warp 1 has never been so cheap!
Wizards have been turning lead into gold for centuries
Thank God! I thought the Steel Age was never going to end!
-Peter
I wonder what this will mean for use of titanium in everyday applications. There's a certain cachet to titanium, but its not all that clear that everyday things, such as tools and such actually *need* the special properties of titanium.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Your 3 cent Titanium tax goes too far!
How is Titanium better than Aluminium?
Titanium foil hats HERE WE COME!
Titanium is much heavier than Aluminium, so I don't see titanium soda cans or anything on the horizon (bikes, probably. Planes... maybe partially.) However, in many cases it's a very strong contender for replacing steel. Unless the metal is going to be getting extremely hot (IIRC, at over 800 degrees C titanium will burn in a nitrogen atmosphere) or you need it to be magnetic, titanium offers 40% less weight and 30% increased strength over steel.
It's win/win. A titanium car will get better gas milage due to weight reduction, yet would fare better in an accident than a similarly-sized steel car. A titanium construction beam will support more than a steel beam while putting less stress on the supports below it.
I say your 3-cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!
... Well, not everything...
Yeah, it just wouldn't sound quite right to hear Bender say "Bite my shiny titanium ass".
I took Sadoway's class last year. Awesome guy -- this is right up his alley (making things more environmentally friendly).
Here's a PDF presentation on the process:
http://web.mit.edu/dsadoway/www/MOE_Ti.pdf
This
Sweet! Titanium foil!
I worked at a titanium manufacturing plant where I analyzed samples for nitrogen contamination. Even though it was a pretty low level repetitive job, I still felt like a scientist working in a lab wearing a lab coat and the head chemist was a guy from Sweden named Jurgen (?sp). I also remember that the titanium tetrachloride was so volatile that just a spoonfull released into the atmosphere would create a huge white cloud and the fire department would show up and management would have to fill out an incident report. Good memories, except for the time I got hydrofluoric acid on my fingers, very painfull, and of course when I accidently breathed in some vapors and had frequent nosebleeds for several years afterwards.
All generalities are dangerous except ones that start with "All
Oh ok I'll take my tablets now...
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Looks like Sadoway may just be on his way to that Nobel prize he's been obsessed with. :P
n gineering/3-091Fall-2004/LectureNotes/index.htm
For those that aren't familiar with MIT's most pimp chem prof you can enjoy a full semester of his lectures right here: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Materials-Science-and-E
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
That is rather hot. So apart from the natural gas well required to melt the stuff, you also need a nuclear power station for electricity. Something tells me it is going to cost a leeeetle bit more than $3 per pound.
Oh well, what the hell...
dammit should have gotten the gold quoated watch. titanium watch selles for the same price as gold even abit more. but gold is woth 400ish now a day :P
Someone's acting awfully aluminum!
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Just jeffin' ya. Sounds like an interesting hobby. Know anyone who makes swords? I've heard that the metallurgy that goes into a modern metal blade is quite impressive, and that modern swords -- despite being made almost entire by hobbyists -- are far superior to the swords of antiquity.
Isn't aluminum known for being quite combustible? I seem to recall there being a rather serious "incident" when it turned out that the aluminum hulls on Britain's destroyers would ignite after being hit by torpedoes, resulting in self-sustaining combustion. I could be misremembering though, so don't take my word for it.
I haven't ... yet. Now I have one less excuse to not go camping.
NT
The Sheffield was lost in the Falkland Islands conflict. It is popularly beleived that this was due to the alumiminum superstructure catching fire. However, it seems that the Sheffield did not have an aluminum superstructure and the Sheffield was lost for other reasons.
s p?PageId=111
http://www.hazegray.org/faq/smn6.htm#F7
http://www.alfed.org.uk/templates/alfed/content.a
It is also worth noting that any metal can catch fire if you get it hot enough, even steel.
Mean while the price of titanium anti-corrosion coating will increase from $3 to $40 per pound.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Was it he who dropped this info to the startup? Did he also drop the transparency trick too? Please say yes.
Someone more knowledgeable than I am please correct/elaborate, but isn't this essentially the same process that turned aluminum from a rare and barely-usable metal into a ubiquitous industrial material?
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
The FFC Cambridge Process was invented in 1996.s
Read about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFC_Cambridge_Proces
and there are actual references to scientific
journals at the end of the article, for those
who don't take Wikipedia on faith...
My brother knows one of these modern-day master swordsmakers. One of the new tricks is to use high quality braided cable as a starting material. You flux it or something, then heat and pound. Like starting out with a Damascus or samurai style laminated blade, but woven instead of folded. Sounded pretty cool to me.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Actually you would not want a terribly lightweight shotgun. They in fact benefit from all that weight.
.22 LR before and it was so deceptively light you'd go to pick it up and end up almost throwing it off the bench accidentally because it would be so much lighter than you were expecting. I think the frame was Aluminum-Scandium alloy.
You could quite easily make a very lightweight firearm (in fact, some manufacturers do, especially with handguns [1]) by putting a thin steel sleeve inside a rigid aluminum alloy barrel, but the lower mass means more felt recoil and less accuracy. Likewise, you could make stocks out of equally rigid but very light carbon fiber or foam-core plastic, but people still buy heavy wood or Zytel ones because a certain weight and balance is desirable.
Cost isn't what's holding back anyone from making titanium firearms: everybody who really wants a titanium firearm already has one, and most people don't.
[1] - IIRC, it's Smith and Wesson that had/has a line of ultra-lightweight revolvers that used steel barrels sleeved into frames made of a pretty exotic Al alloy. I think they were called "Airlights" or "Airweights" or something like that. I've shot one in
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Scientist: "Do you know what this will mean to the starving nations of the world?"
Nick Rivers: "Yeah. They'd have enough salt^Wtitanium to last a lifetime!"
Lump lingered last in line for brains, and the ones she got were sorta rotten and insane.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
... widespread demand for titanium dioxide as a source for metallic titanium has lead to huge increases in the price of sunblock. P.
"That's exactly what I said, only different."
Slashdot participant IamNotAgeek has been confirmed as The Toxic Avenger. Film at 11.
Not at the pentagon even? Jet fuel burns at too low a temp to melt even the grade of steel used to built the twin towers.
2 3762628848&q=loose+change
Much more disturbing information at -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-82600599
I know it sounds fishy, but at least give it a look
Of course they are carefully looking at the AMERICAN price for titanium production..
It is much much cheaper in Russia, as it is basically produced as a side effect of steel production there due to the different ores available.
Most significant titanium users source their titanium from Russia, and there is little interest in other sources as Russia just has the right ores anyway.
Oh well, good try though.
Great, then maybe my $3,200 wheelchair would only cost $2,999 thanks to the wonderful medical equipment industry.
Ti in a bike is for little people. I might consider a 60/40 but I'd rather ride good carbon fiber frame. I've snapped too much Ti in bike gear. Ti pedals have weight limits too. 185lbs max typically. Sorry, I border that and push hard. Ain't killing myself to shave some grams on the bike. Cheap carbon fiber is a no-no though.
The shape is as important as the material. A car/part doesn't crumple or not crumple simply because it's made of titanium.
"Using technology developed at MIT, 4-person startup Avanti Metal hopes to reduce the cost of producing Titanium from the current $40 per pound to a mere $3."
What business people read:
"Using technology developed at MIT, 4-person startup Avanti Metal hopes to increase the profit of producing Titanium by $37 a pound!"
If the automakers could use titanium in cars to reduce weight it would be great. However, titanium is notoriously hard to metal-work, and so auto crash repair would be very difficult for independent auto shops and probably dealers too. BMW has this problem right now. But my bet is that automakers will be forced to use it someday to improve gas mileage. Gosh, I want my new titanium Hummer IV. Although affordable titanium bicycles would be really nice too.
..that generate their own power onsite sometimes stop production and sell all the electric they can into the grid when the price is right, they actually make more money then producing aluminum.
;) Nothing to see here, move along.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
I mine all my tritanium from Veldspar. They should really get Refining Efficiency V. Would make the process... Oh. Titanium... nevermind.
Of course the price of titanium does not depend on cheapness of manufacture but what Mr Putin says to be the price, because Russia (formerly USSR) has a monopoly on titanium supply. Currently it does not matter for them, because oil revenue is more than they can spend.
Now that they start rebuilding the armed forces with new ICBMS, jetfighters and aircraft carriers, that may change soon, as one may spend all the world's money on weapons and that is still not enough, according to Mr. Machiavelli.
Titanium, steel and aluminum alloys are all used to make bicycle frames and parts. My understanding is that the commonly used alloys of all three elements have roughly the same stength-to-weight ratio. They do have different densities - titanium is about half as dense as steel, and aluminum is only a third as dense as steel. Steel gets used when cost or strength in a limited volume is an issue, or where a certain degree of flex is desirable. Titanium is an expensive upgrade for steel parts, since it has roughly similar mechanical properties. Aluminum gets used for everything else. It's the weakest of the three, but it is much less expensive than titanium, easier to work with, and you can engineer structures that take advantage of its low density (like large diameter tubes).
My first thought was that a drop in the price of titanium would have a significant effect on the high-end bicycle market. But aluminum and carbon fiber appear to be taking over as the materials of choice for bike parts, and even cheap titanium wouldn't make a significant dent. Only parts that are predominantly steel (chainrings, cassettes, bolts) would be affected.
My watch is Titanium.
My phone is Titanium.
My laptop is Titanium.
My bike is Titanium.
I want more Titanium. It's strong, light, springy and has a super-cool dull grey sheen.
I'm 40% Titanium.
The cost of producing Titanium isnt even the 5th most prominent reason that it's not used more. Here's a few more significant reasons:
given the choice of using steel or aluminum, versus using titanium at 100x the cost, 10x the likelyhood of the part breaking if touched by the wrong stuff, most engineers will go with anything but titanium.
I've always wondered... Where do you actually find metals? It's not like I keep digging up bits of iron or copper whenever I'm out in the garden - yet there seems to be a near limitless supply of iron and copper. Are they located in specific countries? I know the UK has a large steel industry so we must have a fair bit of iron somewhere.
Even table salt is slightly radioactive.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
If they can cut the production cost of titanium to US$3 per pound, one place where the metal could be VERY useful is the automobile industry.
Titanium alloy body structure parts combined with lightweight steel alloy parts that make it possible to have "crush zones" to protect the passengers in an accident could mean much lighter vehicles, even at minivan/SUV size. Imagine a US-market Honda Accord four-door saloon going from circa 3,000 pounds to below 2,600 pounds kerb weight, which will do wonders for better fuel economy.
Awesome, welcome to 'The Titanium Age' ;)
...I'm holding out for transparent aluminum! :o)
In a few years it will be time to upgrade my skeleton. Cheap titanium will be a big plus.
I haven't figured out the CPU and power upgrades yet.
As for corrosion resistance, I can't imagine what you're talking about. Titanium does the same thing aluminum does: the outside oxidizes in a thin layer that protects the rest of the piece. That means that, unlike your beloved Detroit wonder metal, it doesn't rust. For many applications, this is more important than its ability to resist assault by felt-tip markers.
Unless they work in the aerospace industry, in which case every extra pound of airframe weight costs $500 to $1000 a year to lug around for the rest of the airplane's service life (up to 40 years), about the same cost increase for spacecraft expect with those you pay in one lump sum at launch time. Still, titanium use is limited by cost and supply, though by limited I mean about >10% by weight of the upcoming Boeing 787, slightly less (by percent weight) in an Airbus A380.
A titanium part that is built right weighs in at a fraction of a comparable steel part. The cost differences are reduced somewhat because aircraft tend to use stainless steel to get some corrision resistance whereas titanium is essentially corrision-proof in aircraft applications (stainless steel and aluminum are not) and must not be quite as sensitive as you make it seem (or is treatable with proper unlimited-life coatings, I honestly don't know, AE not MME), otherwise they could never let in out on the same ramp as the idiots who like to spear aircraft with the bagagge loaders.
Now what could make this a non-answer to a non-problem is that parts that migrated to titanium years ago for strength/weight purposes are not migrating to carbon fiber composites (>50% of a 787 by weight), though not into areas requiring high temperature operation.
I just finished a grad-level materials course, and did a project on relative strengths of various materials for use in maille. Long story short, titanium lost badly. Due to its poor rigidity it performed significantly worse on both a per-weight and per-volume basis than cold drawn "mild" steel.
Unless you really just feel like throwing your money away, stick with stainless. On a per-volume basis it's slightly better than inconel, on a per-weight basis it beats inconel by about 20%, and it costs less than 1/2 what inconel does. Titanium costs almost 4x as much as stainless, and in my tests turned in 1/5 of stainless' performance by weight. Mild steel costs 1/2 what stainless does, but turns in 1/3 of the performance (on both a volume and weight basis).
(Note: These results are for butted maille samples stessed in tension until failure; performance is measured in total energy absorbed during the process. The results would be different if the rings were welded, but have fun welding the titanium.)
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Verified with my ER-doctor fiancee, who ran it past the orthopedics guys as well to make sure they can cut them too. Titanium rings aren't a problem.
Then how do you explain the increasing demand mentioned in the article? Nobody is suggesting we won't be using steel anymore in 20 years, but clearly titanium has substantial advantages over steel and aluminum for some applications, or nobody would use it.
Funny you should mention that-- I just got a titanium screw stuck in my jaw for a "Dental Implant" (fake tooth). It's like a drywall anchor. Later, I go back, and they'll screw the fake tooth into the anchor.
That made me shoot coffee out my nose. Which is another reason to hate titanium.
Harness is extremely complex to measure in any theoretically sensible units. (That is, units derived from other units, like MPa.) Instead we use standardized _practical_ tests, like "how big is the hole if we press X hard with a diamond bit"
The first link you list specificially has hardness discussed just below modulus - and you're quoting us modulus numbers which are of only slight relevance. (That is, the same material in various alloys is usually harder and has a harder modulus as you make it less ductile.)
Ti is commonly harder than mild carbon steel. So is stainless steel, which is more common in jewelry than mild carbon steel. But, you simply can't figure out which is harder without knowing the alloys and heat treatments involved because this makes a huge difference.
However, precious jewelry metals (silver, gold) are supposed to be very pure and are relatively very soft. So if your old ring cutter is only for those metals, Ti OR Steel is going to be bad news.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
That's about 0.0055%. 55 parts per million. And a lot of that titanium goes into alloying steel! World use of titanium as a structural metal is miniscule.