A Cleaner, Cheaper Route to Titanium

Burlap writes "Using technology developed at MIT, 4-person startup Avanti Metal hopes to reduce the cost of producing Titanium from the current $40 per pound to a mere $3. The article discusses how a special combinations of oxides and electrolysis separates the titanium metal from the Earth's abundant titanium oxide ore."

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can have brass, silver, gold, and titanium pantalones! And perhaps a big metal unit as well!

Better processing available

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody uses the Titanium. Servers just use a MD Pteron if they want price-performance. And Onroe is just around the corner. Even cheaper Titaniums aren't worth the bother. Ntel can't drop the product line as a matter of face, but consumers just aren't buying it.

Re:Great for chainmaillers

[PainBreak]

Sweet deal, that's what.. +4, +5 against illegal immigrants?

No, seriously. Who would buy titanium chainmail? Some pretty serious D&Ders in here...

Oh well, at least it'll drive down the price of the MacBook.

Oh, cool...

[__aaclcg7560]

Now I can buy the colorful lights for the warp drive engine instead spending all the money on plating the hull with expensive titanium. Warp 1 has never been so cheap!

Steel Age

[pete-classic]

Thank God! I thought the Steel Age was never going to end!

-Peter

WOO HOO!

[GrumblyStuff]

Titanium foil hats HERE WE COME!

Oblig. Response

[Dachannien]

I say your 3-cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!

You know what this means?

[Timbotronic]

MacBook Pros are going to be cheap!!

Oh ok I'll take my tablets now...

Re:Great for chainmaillers

[misleb]

Normally I hate getting chain letters, but at $40/lb, it might not be such a bad deal. I'm not worried about bad luck so I'd just sell them when the price is high. Shall I email you my snail-mail address?

-matthew

Re:Aluminium?

[th77]

I think Bender put it best [things.org]:

      Bender: I'll miss you, Leela. I know you're just a carbon-based
                  life-form, but I'll always think of you as a big pile of
                  titanium. [Sniffles]
          Fry: What Bender means is, you're really brave, and smart and
                  beautiful and a great friend.
      Bender: Just like titanium. [Sobs]
        Leela: This is all a big load. I was the one trying to save
                  the Popplers. You [Points at Fry] were sucking them
                  down like the fat hog you are, and you [Points at
                  Bender] were stepping on them for fun. You both should
                  be in here instead of me.
      Bender: Someone's acting awfully aluminum.

titanium anti-corrosion coating

[cyfer2000]

Mean while the price of titanium anti-corrosion coating will increase from $3 to $40 per pound.

Scotty?

[shoolz]

Was it he who dropped this info to the startup? Did he also drop the transparency trick too? Please say yes.

Re:1,700 degrees Celsius

[erice]

Unless you were to construct a nuclear power plant to directly heat the titanium oxide mixture using the reactor pile itself.

Unfortunatley, the world market for radioactive titanium is rather small.

You will need some sort of high temperature heat exchanger that will not, itself, become radioactive. I don't think water will do. Actually, you may have trouble just running the reactor that hot. I think you will need a gaseous core reactor.

http://gif.inel.gov/roadmap/pdfs/non-classical_rea ctor_systems.pdf [inel.gov]

That's rather beyond the current state of the art.

Re:Great for chainmaillers

[Nefarious Wheel]

Yep, I've got a friend who makes maille too, says the same thing (unless you're him, K?). I tried to sell him on the idea of Unobtanium, but he said his customers prefer either Titanium or Expensium. Hardtoobtainium is pretty good too, but suffers from consistency of supply issues.

Re:Apples and oranges...

[vmcto]

This quite possibly the most informative post I have ever read on Slashdot. Seriously.

Please endeavor to learn other areas of technology so you can continue to inform me.

Re:Great for chainmaillers

[Wooster_UK]

It's also good when you need a knife that can operate in an environment where you can't use tools that react to magnetic fields.

Like airports?

Re:Print Friendly View

[mjpaci]

That's sabotage! In order NOT to get killed in ad costs by being slashdotted, techreview redirected the page-of-slashdottedness back to an ad on Slashdot thus screwing slashdot and something, something, something....

It made sense when I started typing. It's too damn early...

--Mike