Question

The element titanium occurs on earth as titanium (IV) oxide and is found mostly in the mineral called rutile. Rutile is abundant in beach sands in Australia and South Africa. For titanium to be useful, rutile has to be processed to obtain the basic metal form of titanium. Although the process is costly, titanium is gaining popularity as a material for various equipment due to its strength and light weight. One such application is in sports equipment.

1) Explain the chemical process of manufacturing the metal form of titanium.

2) Explain why titanium is a good choice of material for golf clubs. When not in use, discuss at least one precaution to observe when storing clubs?

3) During the fabrication of golf clubs, finely divided titanium is generated, which poses a dangerous risk of fire and explosion. Explain the chemical process involved.

Answer 1

Kroll proces is used for producing Titanium. Ilmenite and rutile can be used to make Titanium. Rutile is passed throguh a fluidized along with chlorine gas and the mixture is heated up to 900 deg.c which leads to formation of TiCl4. This is impure and needs to be treated futher in a distillation column. This sterp removes metal chlorides including those of iron, vanadium, zirconium, silicon, and magnesium. The liquid TiCl4 is transferred into a strainless steel container and mixed with Magnesium and heated to 1100 deg.c and an inert blanket in the form of Argon is also provided in the reactor.

The magnesium reacts with the chlorine producing liquid magnesium chloride. This leaves pure titanium solid since the melting point of titanium is higher than that of the reaction.

The titanium solid is removed from the reactor by boring and then treated with water and hydrochloric acid to remove excess magnesium and magnesium chloride. The resulting solid is a porous metal called a sponge.

2)Titanium is a good choice of material for golf clubs due to its stength, light weight and resistance to corrosion

3)Clubs containing titanium can produce sparks of up to as high as 3,000⁰ C.. Violent reaction between oxygen and nitrogen in air takes place leading to fire and explosion.