Abstract
Metallothermic reduction is, at the moment, the only commercially available process for the industrial production of titanium sponge (Kroll process). Although the apparatus and procedures have improved over the past 50 years, it is still difficult to recover the waste heat from the individual steps and the total efficiency of titanium production is worse than that in continuous steelmaking. Therefore, alternative processes to produce low-cost titanium are desirable. These methods should possess the same requisites as the Kroll process, in terms of metal quality, as well as continuous operation and energy effective. The present work deals with the investigation of a titanium production method that uses TiO2 enriched titania slag as raw material. The process involves two steps: i) carbothermal reduction of the slag to form titanium oxycarbide (TiOxCy) powder; and ii) electrolysis in molten chlorides using a TiOxCy consumable anodes