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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 agree, although the temperatures that they say that this process occurs at are almost twice the temperature you need to refine aluminum. That might explain why it was considered practical for aluminum, but not considered for titanium. They did say that they were having problems with heat.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I agree on the whole "announce a price when we havent even got a commercial demo plant" thing being stupid, but you seem to have missed something. According to the article, supply of titanium is currently very limited due to environmental concerns, while demand keeps going up (and, although I'm not a metalurgist, is there any reason that titanium couldnt replace steel almost entirely if it was cheap enough? thats a lot of demand!). This removes that supply problem entirely if it works of course.
watch "the money masters" on google video
Not to be pedantic or anything, but you would actually fare worse in a car wreck in a Titanium car, as it wouldn't give as readily as steel. The more time the impact lasts, the less force the passengers experience. So in a wreck between a titanium Geo Metro and a steel Geo Metro, the passengers of the titanium car could be extracted faster but would be more likely to die. There are more considerations to engineering than just weight and efficiency. If something cant get you from point A to point B as safely as the less-efficient alternative, than the less-efficient alternative bears at least some looking into.
SRSLY.
Not to be pedantic or anything, but you would actually fare worse in a car wreck in a Titanium car, as it wouldn't give as readily as steel.
So why don't we make cars out of cotton wool or balsa wood?
You want crumple zones, yes, but surrounding a stiff inner structure. That's why doors have stiff cross-beams in them, race cars have roll cages, etc. No titanium for the crumple zones, sure, but you want it for the roll cage.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
In summary, titanium is kept in limited used in industry because it's hard to weld, not because it's expensive.
Just wanted to add to all of the great stuff you said by also pointing out that titanium is also a pain to work with in pretty much every other way. It's tough to machine, it's also a bitch to use as sheet metal--it's springy and not as malleable as steel or aluminum at room temperature. You've often got to heat it signifigantly if you need to make tight bends... Plus, all of that is compounded by the alloys of titanium which are even harder to use and form than the pure stuff.
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Let's think of this from a business standpoint: patent the process. Produce titanium in small numbers to prevent market saturation. Charge the same amount as everyone else, but at 10% the production cost. I don't see the savings being passed to the consumer anytime soon.
Well the patent holder would want to maximise profit, so will have to produce enough to make it worth while. So, this would increase supply at least somewhat and thus likely decrease prices. And it is very likely that the patent holder would just want to license the process to current companies instead of actually getting capital to start their own plant. So, they would have incentive to license the process to as many companies as possible. At which point it only takes one company to decide that it needs to increase production to increase market share in order to have an effect of lowering prices. Of course, there can always be anti competitive price fixing, but that is illegal and can't go on forever.