Titanium powder made by the TiRO™ process.

Making titanium metal powder

Based on fluidised bed technology, CSIRO’s novel TiRO™ process produces high quality commercially pure titanium powder.

• 8 October 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• A unique continuous process
• Scale-up to commercial production   

Using established Kroll process chemistry, CSIRO is developing a new two-step process which enables direct production of titanium metal powder suitable for use in near net shape manufacturing.

The TiRO™ process involves the continuous reduction of titanium tetrachloride with magnesium.

CSIRO’s expertise in fluidised bed technology (where solid particles suspended in a gas act like a fluid), process engineering and computerised modelling have been applied to build a pilot-scale fluidised bed reactor, and develop a high-efficiency metal separation process.

The pilot plant is scalable to commercial production facility size.

It is envisaged that the TiRO™ technology will facilitate growth of down-stream direct manufacturing businesses in Australia.

A unique continuous process

The TiRO™ process is continuous; this provides a number of benefits in comparison with a batch process:

• low inventory and low working capital
  

  A CSIRO research engineer operating the TiRO™ reactor using a computerised console.

• safety - risk of metal powder incidents minimised
• enables working to demand and just-in-time production
• fully automatable
• rapid, simple plant start-up and shut-down.

These benefits make the TiRO™ process attractive in terms of efficiency and production costs.

The TiRO™ process conditions can be adjusted to generate titanium powder with particles tailored in shape and size to suit differing downstream applications.

This is an advantage in the fabrication step, where the powders can be consolidated directly, thereby avoiding a further remelt step.

The powder product is suited to downstream applications such as:

• hot isostatic pressing
• metal injection moulding
• cold spray
• titanium sheet manufacture by consolidation
• laserforming.

Scale-up to commercial production

CSIRO engineers initially demonstrated the process in a laboratory scale proof-of-concept reactor capable of generating 200 g/hour of titanium.

This reactor was used to validate the effectiveness and robustness of the process.

Over a two-year timeframe CSIRO has refined the reactor design and built a scalable pilot reactor with production capacity of 2.0 kg/hour of titanium.

This pilot plant is also intended to produce larger quantities of sample to facilitate third-party evaluation and the development of consolidation/fabrication technologies.

CSIRO has redesigned the chloride separation step as a continuous process, capable of producing high quality titanium powder.

The project currently stands poised for scale-up to commercial-scale production.

Learn more about the Light Metals Flagship.