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Thermodynamic Consideration of Direct Oxygen Removal from Titanium by Utilizing Vapor of Rare Earth Metals

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Abstract

With the increase in demand for titanium, the usage of titanium scrap has increased. It is necessary to develop a new technology to efficiently remove oxygen impurities in titanium scrap. However, it is extremely difficult to remove oxygen directly from a solid solution of oxygen and titanium; thus, there is no effective deoxidation method for titanium at the industrial scale. In this study, the authors thermodynamically analyzed and considered the feasibility of a new technology to remove oxygen dissolved in titanium by utilizing the vapor of rare earth metals which have high vapor pressures at high temperatures, such as samarium, europium, thulium, and ytterbium. It was elucidated that titanium with oxygen levels of < 500 mass ppm could be obtained by exploiting the deoxidation ability of samarium, thulium, and ytterbium combined with their ability to form oxychlorides. The oxygen level achieved through the proposed technology is lower than that obtained using metallic calcium vapor. Based on thermodynamic considerations, a new process to efficiently remove oxygen in titanium using rare earth metals with high vapor pressure based on their oxyhalide formation is proposed.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express their sincere gratitude to Professor Hongmin Zhu and Professor Osamu Takeda of the Department of Metallurgy, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Professor Yu-ki Yaninouchi of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University, and graduate students Mr. Akihiro Iizuka and Mr. Kenta Akaishi of the Department of Materials Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, for their valuable advice in compiling this work. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Scientific Research (S) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) (Project Numbers: 26220910 and 19H05623). A part of this work is based on the results obtained from a project commissioned by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) Feasibility Study Program (Uncharted Territory Challenge 2050).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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  1. Lingxin Kong

    Present address: Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, No. 253, Xuefu Road, Kunming, 650093, China

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  1. Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan

    Toru H. Okabe, Lingxin Kong & Takanari Ouchi

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Manuscript submitted July 16, 2021; accepted September 28, 2021.

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Okabe, T.H., Kong, L. & Ouchi, T. Thermodynamic Consideration of Direct Oxygen Removal from Titanium by Utilizing Vapor of Rare Earth Metals. Metall Mater Trans B 53, 1269–1282 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11663-021-02342-z

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