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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."
No one found this earlier. The Hall-Heroult Process for aluminium is basically the same,and has been known for well over a century.
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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
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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.
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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.
Then why not get a ring made out of Tungsten? It's pretty expensive too and twice as dense as gold.
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
Sorry, but there's no direct contact between the soda and the metal. The cans are lined with a thin coating of some sort. Otherwise the soda would indeed dissolve the can.
In case you're doubting, here's the experiment that showed me what's up: Wash two soda cans. Score the inside of one of the cans, just a tiny scratch going all the way around, to penetrate the protective coating. Then fill both cans with an acidic solution and let them sit around a few hours. Dump out the acid, and you can tear apart the scored can as if it were paper. Chemistry magic trick.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
You can tear apart an unscored can as if it were paper. They are really thin these days.
Steel was once used, but we had to switch to aluminum because Coke ate through the steel too fast.
Actually that durability can be one of the biggest problems with Titanium rings, trauma sheers can't cut them so if you have any kind of severe sweeling problem there's a good chance of digit loss because the ER won't be able to remove the ring. That and the fact that my father gave me his ring are the reason I didn't get a titanium one. (He hadn't worn his in 20 years due to working with the machining industry and seeing several people lose their hands in machines due to wedding bands).
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Oh, the colors are beautiful, I can't disagree. I've seen paintings from the 70s that apparently used an electrified brush that acted as anode, and the technique would build an oxide layer on the surface of the Ti. The really cool thing was that by varying the thickness of the oxide layer, any color from white to yellow to blue to dark brown could be achieved because of the way light plays with titanium oxide... And there were no other compounds but Titanium and Titanium Oxide used for the whole painting! I've always been impressed with that stuff.
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> Ti is an American strategic resource, none of which is found in the U.S.
Titanium is the 9th most common element in the Earth's crust and is found everywhere, including the US. While the US presently imports titanium (from Canada and Australia, for example) domestic production could easily be increased.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Rockwell numbers are kind of arbitrary. What the hell does 57 on Rockwell C mean in real-world terms? Think about what Rockwell and the like test: you apply a known force to a ball or diamond of a known cross-section and measure the resultant deformation. Force per unit area... is PSI. Or KPa. Those are non-arbitrary terms, or at least they're one level less arbitrary than Vickers or Rockwell numbers. "The yield strength in tension is about 1/3 of the hardness" and yield strengths are measured in KPa (if you're in a civilized country) or PSI (otherwise).
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