UPGRADING ILMENITE INTO A HIGH-GRADE SYNTHETIC RUTILE

Titanium, the ninth most abundant element, occurs mainly in minable form as ilmenite (95%) and rutile (5%) minerals. The current world consumption of these minerals is used mainly to produce titanium dioxide pigments, with the balance in welding rod flux and titanium metal. Ilmenite is currently being mined in annual quantities eight times larger that rutile. In the past 25 years, an increasing percentage of the pigments have been produced via the chloride method, which requires rutile. This has caused the need to produce a synthetic rutile of more than 90% TiO2 content and large amounts of an 85% TiO2 slag from ilmenite. The direct chlorination of 61% TiO2 ilmenite is being done on a large scale in the United States.