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."

Comments

I'm surprised

[Watson Ladd]

No one found this earlier. The Hall-Heroult Process for aluminium is basically the same,and has been known for well over a century.

One of my first jobs

[IamNotAgeek]

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.