Development of indigenous technology for production of titanium sponge by the Kroll process

Titanium has emerged as a major structural metal for a wide range of industrial applications due to its attractive engineering properties. India has a large and rich reserve base for this metal in the beach sands of the eastern and southern regions with well established production facilities for their separation into individual minerals. Research and Development activities for establishing the metal production technology have been underway in the country for over two decades. The Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad, has already demonstrated the metal production technology by the conventional Kroll process on 2000 kg/batch scale and is now all set for demonstrating the same by the more advanced, energy efficient combined process route on 4000 kg/batch scale. The paper reviews the R & D efforts undertaken so far in the field of metal extraction with emphasis on the current status of this developmental activity at DMRL.