All

Any body have a feel for the FFC Cambridge Titanium Electrolytic
Production Process and if it will bring down the price of titanium at
some forseeable future date as projected?

Richard Saam

No, because much of the expense of using titanium comes from the
difficulty in working with it.

I recently received a quote for 1000 lb of .005 x 24 inch thick titanium
sheet for 28 USdollar / lb.
What you are saying is that there is not a reasonable chance to get it
down to 10 USdollar / lb / lb or so.
Just dreaming, but would there be a chance that the FFC electrolytic
cell could continuously extrude titanium metal sheet (moving electrode)
therebye eliminating following expensive conventional processing steps.

The attraction to titanium of course is in strength and chemical
stability attributes along with being a relatively common element in the
earth's crust.

Richard Saam

I believe that it is very much an open question as to whether the FFC
process will have any effect on the price of titanium. They have gotten a
lot of money from DARPA so perhaps we will see some results soon.

There was a session on titanium processes at the recent TMS meeting in
Charlotte NC and the proceedings are available.

If you email me I can send you a few articles.

Steve Gerdemann

The FFC process is mostly associated with titanium because that was the
metal being studied when it was invented. Titanium may become one of its
biggest markets but silicon or chromium could be bigger. However,
talking of elements is a bit misleading because the process's biggest
proven advantage is the ability to form alloys directly from mixed
oxides. One thing is for certain and that is that titanium will not be
the first metal to be commercially produced by the process because the
costs are far too high at present.

Most likely the process will produce a powder and the impact on the cost
of finished titanium products will come from using powder metallurgy
techniques in combination with the FFC process. Processing of the oxide
ores will also have to be economized by taking advantage of the
process's ability to use mixed oxides. All that will take years and far
greater funds than DARPA have contributed so far.

The FCC-Cambridge method uses titanium dioxide, ordinarily an insulator, as the electrodes in a proccess similar to electroysis. They figured that when quantum effects were accounted for, after a small number of oxygen ions are removed from TiO2, the material would become a conductor. As current flows across the electrodes, oxygen ions are removed from the electrode, leaving behind the pure element.

Alot of the cost of tiatnium currently is the difficulty in extracting it, not the difficulty in working it. In fact, with titanium able to deform elasticly to around 80% in certain situations, and its ability to form bonds ithout any extreme temperatures or conditions, Ti may be easier to form than steel. The current industrial proccess used for extracting Ti, the Kroll Method, is a two step, batch reducment method. Ore is first thurned into titanuium chloride, a toxic and dangerous substance, and them the cloride is removed in a second stage. Since this is a batch proccess(ie. the vats must be filled, refilled, and emptied periodically), it is not as cost efficient as a continuous method such as electrolysis.

Is FCC cambridge method realy cheaper than the tradational titanium extraction process?

Is the FCC Cambridge method can realy extract all oxygen from TiO2 ? Up to know, the report has not shown the XRD , XPS or other structure or elecment characterization results.

The only evedence saying it is metal is that it is conductive, and looks like metal luster. However, TiO2-x is also electrically conductive.

Dear Steve Gerdemann: Can you kindly send me the relative papers about FCC Cambridge process? My address is: xyfang2001@yahoo.com.hk

I'm working on a database about the emerging process, that could
replace Kroll process. If you have any recent information (after 2004) about
FFC process, I would be very grateful ! My mail is : guillaumeang@hotmail.com

Otherwise, I know that, for FFC, QinetiQ has some legal problems with BTi, what could explains we don't a lot of news about the advancement of the process development.

The FFC Cambridge Titanium Electrolytic Process, from what I have read on the internet, is similar to the electrolytic process proposed by the National Lead Company in 1950 to 1955. Documents relating to this work should be available from company archives originally stored at Sayreville, N. J. I worked on this project from the beginning and compared all processes available at that time. The Kroll Process was chosen because it was more advanced and could be put into commercial production faster. The projected cost at that time was $ 5.00/lb. A rolling mill, formerly used to roll stainless steel, was available at Toronto, Ohio, and was adapted to roll the sponge produced at Henderson, Nevada. Titanium Tetrachloride was produced, at Henderson, Nevada, by chlorination of rutile mined at company properties in Australia. The Henderson location was chosen because the equipment available there was used to produce magnesium during WW2. An attempt to produce magnesium and chlorine from the lake at Salt Lake City was not successful. A pilot plant was constructed along the lake about 50 miles from the city. Evaporating ponds were used to concentrate the water and produce a mother liquor for feed to the pilot plant. A commercial plant to produce magnesium and chlorine was constructed but was not successful. Many problems with electrolytic cell design and operation were not anticipated. An original estimate of $ 30 million for the magnesium plant grew to $ 200 million. Other sources of titanium were considered for future use to reduce cost.

National Lead Co. produced many Titanium products including Titanium dioxide pigment and Titanium metal. Every source of Titanium was investigated including rutile, slag from QIT, Norwegian Ilmenite, Mac Intyre Ilmenite and many others. Several processes were investigated to upgrade the ilmenite. The one with most promise was developed in Norway. That process was extensively tested on a large scale in Birmingham, Alabama, to upgrade low grade iron ore by solid state reduction. The plant produced briquettes containing 98 percent metallic iron suitable for feed to an electric furnace. Republic Steel Corporation took all that was produced.