What is Titanium Sponge?
Titanium sponge is a porous form of titanium that is created during the first stage of processing. In its natural form, titanium is widely available within the earth’s crust. After being extracted, it is processed to remove excess materials and convert it into a usable, although costly, product. The conversion process used with raw titanium is called the Kroll process. This is a complex, multistage, batch process that requires very high heat and specialized equipment. The Kroll process converts the metal oxide into chloride by passing the metal over extremely hot rutile or ilmenite and carbon to create titanium tetrachloride. These chemicals are separated through a process called fractional distillation in which the components of a mixture are separated based on their different boiling points. The material resulting from the Kroll process is titanium sponge. This sponge is then subjected to leaching or heated vacuum distillation to remove further impurities. The remaining materials in
Titanium Sponge is the product gained through the application of the Kroll process on raw titanium ore. Depending on the application of this process, differing purities of titanium sponge can be obtained. The resulting impurities in the sponge usually include iron, chloride, magnesium, silicon, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.
