FFC Cambridge Titanium Electrolytic Production Process

No, because much of the expense of using titanium comes from the difficulty in working with it.

I believe that it is very much an open question as to whether the FFC process will have any effect on the price of titanium. They have gotten a lot of money from DARPA so perhaps we will see some results soon.

There was a session on titanium processes at the recent TMS meeting in Charlotte NC and the proceedings are available.

If you email me I can send you a few articles.

Steve Gerdemann

I recently received a quote for 1000 lb of .005 x 24 inch thick titanium sheet for 28 USdollar / lb. What you are saying is that there is not a reasonable chance to get it down to 10 USdollar / lb / lb or so. Just dreaming, but would there be a chance that the FFC electrolytic cell could continuously extrude titanium metal sheet (moving electrode) therebye eliminating following expensive conventional processing steps.

The attraction to titanium of course is in strength and chemical stability attributes along with being a relatively common element in the earth's crust.

Richard Saam

The FFC process is mostly associated with titanium because that was the metal being studied when it was invented. Titanium may become one of its biggest markets but silicon or chromium could be bigger. However, talking of elements is a bit misleading because the process's biggest proven advantage is the ability to form alloys directly from mixed oxides. One thing is for certain and that is that titanium will not be the first metal to be commercially produced by the process because the costs are far too high at present.

Most likely the process will produce a powder and the impact on the cost of finished titanium products will come from using powder metallurgy techniques in combination with the FFC process. Processing of the oxide ores will also have to be economized by taking advantage of the process's ability to use mixed oxides. All that will take years and far greater funds than DARPA have contributed so far.