Cheap yet ultrapure titanium might enable widespread use in industry (2024)
37 comments
·June 4, 2025Aurornis
mmooss
> this looks like trading one problem for another.
Every choice trades one problem for another. At a minimum, the new problem is the cost in resources - time, money, personal energy (and in business, usually reputation risk and political capital) - but usually the cost is much more than that, especially when looking at alternative technical solutions. In advice to clients I always present the options as the minimum trade-off (it's my job to minimize it).
More generally, the question is, which scenario of outcomes do you want? It could be the scenario with 1% yttrium is far better than the one with oxygen, or that the ytrrium scenario has a very different set of costs and benefits which make it valuable for certain needs that the oxygen scenario doesn't fulfill. It could be that methods for removing yttrium are already mature and only need to be applied to this case.
But especially in this case, the report is about research & development. If there were no more problems to solve then it wouldn't be R&D. It's really self-defeating to criticize progress in R&D because some problems remain. 'We scored a goal, but that's just trading one problem for another - the other team has the ball!'
foota
I'm not sure if it makes it easier, but there are some differences between the high oxygen titanium alloy and titanium with some yttrium in it that might make it easier to separate?
Presumably when you melt the titanium the yttrium doesn't react, whereas the oxygen dissolved in the titanium alloy at room temperature will form titanium dioxide when it's heated (if I'm reading correctly). So maybe you could "just" separate the molten metal by density afterwards? I'm not sure this would work though. For one, you'd need to avoid re-introducing oxygen contamination, but I guess you could do it under a vacuum (yes "just" spin the molten metal at high speed in a vacuum)?
This would seem to me to beg the question of why not just grind up the titanium in a vacuum to remove the oxygen and then melt it down, so I might be missing something here.
LasEspuelas
Agreed. The original paper states that they have a technique to remove oxygen from the surface of titanium. If that is the case, grinding could be viable. How hard is it to grind titanium?
freeone3000
…Very hard. It’s titanium. Every work process has to be done with special carbide bits, at half speed, underwater.
robocat
Grade 2 Sponge Titanium (USD/mt) = $6,087.03
Yttrium: 28.9 USD/kg is 2890 USD/mt
So the 1% Yttrium might be financially reasonable (assuming extra demand can be met). Prices from metal.com
Const-me
I think you made a mistake converting units, 28.9 USD/kg = $28900 per ton.
hinkley
Sounds like a ‘find a useful titanium/??/yttrium alloy’ situation.
I’m shocked that yttrium is dearer than smelted titanium.
robocat
Those figures show Yttrium is about half the price of Titanium metal.
I was shocked at how cheap Yttrium is (I searched for pricing because I thought the 1% might be too expensive). Now I want to buy some...
BurningFrog
"can influence" means either that science doesn't know yet how yttrium influences the alloy properties, or that the journalist didn't ask.
hinkley
Or the scientist read the room and decided being vague was the best option.
duffpkg
In "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed", which is a great read, there is discussion of the incredibly difficult time they had setting up tooling for working with titanium. This remains largely true today. Making things at any scale in titanium, while controlling cost is very, very difficult. Even if the titanium itself is gotten very cheaply.
foota
Looks like they applied for a patent here: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO20...
zafka
Nitinol has been haunting me since 1977 or so. It is such a cool alloy. When I first heard of it, very little had been done with it, and now it is used in many areas. I have yet to come up with any killer use of it on my own though......
westurner
> Unfortunately, producing ultrapure titanium is significantly more expensive than manufacturing steel (an iron alloy) and aluminum, owing to the substantial use of energy and resources in preparing high-purity titanium. Developing a cheap, easy way to prepare it—and facilitate product development for industry and common consumers—is the problem the researchers aimed to address.
"Direct production of low-oxygen-concentration titanium from molten titanium" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49085-4
Animats
Any comments from someone in the metals industry? The paper shows this process being done at lab scale. It needs to be scaled up to steel mill size. How hard does that look?
digdugdirk
From someone in the product design/manufacturing space - this wouldn't change much. The problem with titanium isn't the material cost (which is expensive, but could be justified in a variety of scenarios) but rather everything else about it. Its an absolute pain in the rear to work with, your manufacturing base is tiny, specialized equipment and tooling is needed, it makes tiny little incendiary devices when being cut, etc.
Its cool, and it has plenty of applications where it is the only choice. But those applications already use it, and lowering the material cost isn't going to make more designers decide to just start using it on a whim.
(PS - This could be more useful if titanium 3d printers start becoming more accessible. But again, that's a low volume manufacturing process so the material costs still don't play much into final part cost.)
westurner
What a useful question though. I hadn't realized that the cost of titanium is due to lack of a process for removing oxygen.
What is the most efficient and sustainable alternative to yttrium for removing oxygen from titanium?
process(TiO2, …) => Ti, …
westurner
From teh Gemini 2.5 Pro AI "expert", with human review:
> For primary titanium production (from ore): Molten Salt Electrolysis (Direct Electrochemical Deoxygenation, FFC Cambridge, OS processes, etc.) and calciothermic reduction in molten salts
> They aim to [sic.] revolutionize titanium production by moving away from the energy-intensive and environmentally impactful Kroll process, directly reducing TiO 2 and offering the potential for closed-loop systems.
> For recycling titanium scrap and deep deoxidation: Hydrogen plasma arc melting and calcium-based deoxidation techniques (especially electrochemical calcium generation) are highly promising. Hydrogen offers extreme cleanliness, while calcium offers potent deoxidizing power.
...
> Magnesium Hydride Reduction (e.g., University of Utah's reactor)
> Solid-State Reduction (e.g., Metalysis process)
Are there more efficient, sustainable methods of titanium production?
Also, TIL Ti is a catalyst for CNT carbon nanotube production; and, alloying CNTs with Ti leaves vacancies.
more_corn
Just gotta solve the yttrium issue and it’s ready for prime time. Maybe they could introduce a sort of spider to consume the yttrium…
metalman
there may be no yttrium issue
from wiki: Small amounts of yttrium (0.1 to 0.2%) have been used to reduce the grain sizes of chromium, molybdenum, titanium, and zirconium.[81] Yttrium is used to increase the strength of aluminium and magnesium alloys.[15] The addition of yttrium to alloys generally improves workability, adds resistance to high-temperature recrystallization, and significantly enhances resistance to high-temperature oxidation (see graphite nodule discussion below).[68]
Yttrium can be used to deoxidize vanadium and other non-ferrous metals.[15] Yttria stabilizes the cubic form of zirconia in jewelry.[82]
Yttrium has been studied as a nodulizer in ductile cast iron, forming the graphite into compact nodules instead of flakes to increase ductility and fatigue resistance.[15] Having a high melting point, yttrium oxide is used in some ceramic and glass to impart shock resistance and low thermal expansion properties.[15] Those same properties make such glass useful in camera lenses.[51]
Medical
LasEspuelas
Everything is urgent: "There is thus an urgent need to develop a high-speed and efficient refining method to realize the mass production of low-cost Ti."
jjcm
Surely this is something that will go down in price as energy costs do, regardless of the yttrium approach, correct? With solar getting cheaper and fusion on the horizon, won’t that address the problem as well? I wonder if this intermediary step is necessary if so.
fnord77
> fusion on the horizon
fusion is not on the horizon
_aavaa_
Oh it is, in the same way mirages appear on the horizon.
more_corn
In the same way the pot of gold is at the end of the rainbow. Close enough to see, never close enough to reach.
Electricniko
It is at sunrise and sunset.
jonasenordin
And it's actually a good thing that it hasn't come any closer.
guide42
Best moments to watch the fission.
BirAdam
Maybe? If anyone has better knowledge on whether or not this is legitimate, that would be cool to know.
https://www.businessinsider.com/helion-energy-fusion-company...
ted_dunning
Helion is legitimate and they have a very clever approach, but it definitely still isn't a sure bet that they will succeed.
rjsw
How many times have you arrived at the horizon?
dehrmann
It's 20 years away.
null
This is very cool indeed, but I laughed when I got to the conclusion:
> A limitation of this work is that the resulting de-oxygenated titanium contains yttrium, up to 1% by mass; yttrium can influence the mechanical and chemical properties of titanium alloy. After solving the yttrium contamination problem…
So the process removes the oxygen but then adds yttrium to the metal in significant amounts. That’s not quite the ultra pure titanium I was promised in the headline.
As always, I hope someone figures out the rest of the problem space. As-is, this looks like trading one problem for another.