Pressing and sintering of Ti[O.sub.2] powder cathode used to obtain titanium by electrochemical reduction.(Report)

1. INTRODUCTION

Titanium and especially titanium alloys find usage in different industries such as aeronautics, chemical, medical, metallurgical, naval etc. At the present days, the applications development of titanium-based metallic materials is limited due to its high cost (Nagesh& Ramachandran 2007, Nie et al. 2006).

Now, the most used commercial process to produce titanium is Kroll process (Qiu et al. 2008), which is very expensive one with low efficiency. Thus, the long-term success of the titanium-based materials remains to find new efficient solutions to produce titanium with a minimum impact on the environment. Taking into consideration this, in the last years there have been tested, especially in laboratories, new extraction processes of the metallic titanium such as: Ti[Cl.sub.4] electrolysis in alkaline chloride mixtures or directly from Ti[O.sub.2] through the electrolysis in melted salts, usually calcium chloride (Liu et al. 2007). The most important variants of the electrochemical reduction are FCC, OS, QIT, MER Corporation, BHP Billiton process, respectively. Among these, FCC process seems to have the most success chances at commercial level (Wang & Li 2004).

This paper describes the pressing/sintering process of Ti[O.sub.2] powder to make the cathode. Afterwards, the cathode will be used into an …