Preparation Of Fe - Titanium Oxide Electrode By Carbide Reduction By Fe - Fe

The main methods of titanium alloy are remelting process and metal thermal reduction process in industrial production, but they are exist high production cost, high energy consumption, high content of impurities and low titanium recovery problems. The appearance of molten salt electrolytic method may solve that problems, but there are also many problems that the conductivity of the metal oxide electrode is poor, the temperature of molten salt electrolysis is high, so the researchers are trying to a variety of methods to increase the electrical conductivity of the electrode and to reduce temperature of molten salt electrolysis.In order to solve the problems which are comprehensive utilization of ilmenite and poor electrical conductivity of electrodes, high temperature of molten salt electrolysis, this article put ilmenite as raw materials by carbon thermal reduction of ilmenite pretreatment into Fe-titanium oxide electrode slices, and then in the LiCl-KCl molten salt at400℃to electrolytic reduction of titanium alloy.The experimental results show that the titanium iron ore by carbon thermal reduction. The main product is a mixture of elemental iron and titanium oxide. The reaction is mainly controlled by chemical reaction, the apparent activation energy is82.44kJ·mol-1. The reduction rate and porosity are important parameters of iron electrode, we use ferric chloride, potassium dichromate titration method and Archimedes drainage method to measure the the reduction rate of iron of carbon thermal reduction and the porosity of the electrode, the results showed that the electrode is not strong enough and the elemental iron reduction rate is only30.1%, open porosity is46.3%, the electrode resistivity is0.318Ω· m., and lower strength when the carbon thermal reduction reaction for3h at1173K; The reaction of elemental iron reduction rate can reach to80%, the electrodes’resistivity were0.124Ω·m and0.092Ω·m at1273K and carbon thermal reduction for3h at1373K.But the product of elemental iron changes obviously,enrichment,converge into a strip, the opening of the electrode porosity significantly reduced to35%at1373K. The ilmenite wafer iron reduction rate can reach to80.1%by carbon thermal reduction reaction for3h at1273K, and the open porosity is50.8%, the electrolytic current is the largest.XRD results show that the electrode preparation at1273K can be reduction titanium alloy in molten salt of LiCl-KCl at673K.When we make the ilmenite into electrode by carbon thermal reduction, we can find the reduction of elemental iron looks like balls, uniform distribution in the interior of the electrodes just like the skeleton, greatly increase the electrical conductivity of electrodes, and the elemental iron particle size is only for2-6μm, has more activity, that is advantageous to the molten salt electrolysis.And the electrolytic temperature is only673K, only half of the existing research’s temperature,which saves the cost much more.Based on the test results indicate that:the carbon thermal reduction of ilmenite preparation into electrode slice of the main parameters:nilmcnite:ncarbon powder=1:1.4, the molding pressure of10MPa, reduction temperature is1000℃, reduction time is3h, fast cooling way. It can gain titanium alloy in LiCl-KCl molten salt at400℃by electrolytic reduction.