China Nonferrous Metallurgy

At present, the most widely used method for preparing titanium metal in industry is the Kroll method. However, the Kroll method has the disadvantage of discontinuous production, long process, high energy consumption, and high cost, which leads to the high price of titanium metal and limits the application of titanium. Therefore, it has important meaning to develop new titanium smelting technologies with continuous production, short process and low cost. Hydrogen-assisted magnesiothermic reduction method transforms the Ti-O solid solution into Ti-O-H solid solution by introducing hydrogen into the system, breaking the thermodynamic limit of magnesiothermic reduction of TiO2. In this research, high purity low oxygen titanium hydride was prepared by hydrogen-assisted magnesiothermic reduction method using TiO2 with particle size of 0.05mm at 650℃ for 2h. The destabilizing effect of hydrogen on Ti-O solid solutions was studied by thermodynamic calculations. The presence of hydrogen makes the process of magnesiothermic reduction of titanium dioxide much lower in temperature, shorter in time and more thorough in reduction. The effect of particle size on the oxygen content of the product was studied by single factor experiment. The results show that the larger the particle size, the lower the surface oxygen content of the product. However, too large particle size will lead to poor reduction effect of lattice oxygen. The deoxygenation of the reduction product is the removal of its lattice oxygen. This study can support the further development of the hydrogen-assisted magnesiothermic reduction method.