fusion is not on the horizon
https://www.businessinsider.com/helion-energy-fusion-company...
> A limitation of this work is that the resulting de-oxygenated titanium contains yttrium, up to 1% by mass; yttrium can influence the mechanical and chemical properties of titanium alloy. After solving the yttrium contamination problem…
So the process removes the oxygen but then adds yttrium to the metal in significant amounts. That’s not quite the ultra pure titanium I was promised in the headline.
As always, I hope someone figures out the rest of the problem space. As-is, this looks like trading one problem for another.
Presumably when you melt the titanium the yttrium doesn't react, whereas the oxygen dissolved in the titanium alloy at room temperature will form titanium dioxide when it's heated (if I'm reading correctly). So maybe you could "just" separate the molten metal by density afterwards? I'm not sure this would work though. For one, you'd need to avoid re-introducing oxygen contamination, but I guess you could do it under a vacuum (yes "just" spin the molten metal at high speed in a vacuum)?
This would seem to me to beg the question of why not just grind up the titanium in a vacuum to remove the oxygen and then melt it down, so I might be missing something here.
Yttrium: 28.9 USD/kg is 2890 USD/mt
So the 1% Yttrium might be financially reasonable (assuming extra demand can be met). Prices from metal.com
I’m shocked that yttrium is dearer than smelted titanium.
I was shocked at how cheap Yttrium is (I searched for pricing because I thought the 1% might be too expensive). Now I want to buy some...
Ah shit. I can't shift zeros. 1% of 28900 $/mt is $289. [Yeah: My initial assumption was that Yttrium is really expensive - and it fucking is - I ignored my own smell test - I should have caught my mistake].
That is say 5% of the current final price of Ti (ignoring purity) to end up with something with less oxygen but 1% fucked with Yttrium. You can't just increase price by percentage points for highly competitive commodities. You especially can't add dependencies on elements that are in limited supply and supply controlled/constrained by politics.
So this looks like another academic bullshit result that totally ignores economical realities.
Every choice trades one problem for another. At a minimum, the new problem is the cost in resources - time, money, personal energy (and in business, usually reputation risk and political capital) - but usually the cost is much more than that, especially when looking at alternative technical solutions. In advice to clients I always present the options as the minimum trade-off (it's my job to minimize it).
More generally, the question is, which scenario of outcomes do you want? It could be the scenario with 1% yttrium is far better than the one with oxygen, or that the ytrrium scenario has a very different set of costs and benefits which make it valuable for certain needs that the oxygen scenario doesn't fulfill. It could be that methods for removing yttrium are already mature and only need to be applied to this case.
But especially in this case, the report is about research & development. If there were no more problems to solve then it wouldn't be R&D. It's really self-defeating to criticize progress in R&D because some problems remain. 'We scored a goal, but that's just trading one problem for another - the other team has the ball!'
The problem in this case is that the headline claimed “ultra pure titanium” and the closing paragraph had a tiny oh-by-the-way mention that the process contaminates the titanium with yttrium.
Which is to say, makes it anything but ultra pure. :)
> It could be that methods for removing yttrium are already mature and only need to be applied to this case.
Sorry but no. That’s specially a problem they highlighted as needing a solution.
That said, I welcome others to look into substituting, eg, aluminum for yttrium in these methods (since titalum is already a thing)
Moreover, aluminum is undesirable in titanium implants, even if many surgeons without scruples have used cheaper Ti-Al-V alloys taken from aviation suppliers, instead of more expensive alloys designed specifically for compatibility with living tissues, despite the fact that it was always pretty clear that such Ti-Al-V alloys are not suitable for long-term implants.
Yttrium is also not desirable for implants, so the titanium produced by this method is not good for implants, but it is good for most other applications of titanium, where yttrium is not harmful.
For each kind of titanium alloy, depending on its chemical composition and on its intended crystal structure, yttrium may happen to be harmful or beneficial. Yttrium atoms are significantly bigger than titanium atoms. This can influence the crystal structure and the mechanical properties of the alloys, even with only a small percentage of residual yttrium.
Almost pure non-alloyed titanium (which normally contains residual quantities of oxygen and iron) is used in applications where chemical resistance is more important than mechanical resistance, e.g. for medical implants, vessels and pipes exposed to various chemicals, spoons, metal parts that will be in contact with a human body, e.g. rings or bracelets etc.
Yttrium may diminish somewhat the chemical resistance of titanium for such applications, but the resistance might still be adequate for many of these applications.
The stability of al oxyhalide with respect to al oxide and al halide is the key here? Not sure if that has been "adequately" explored either, especially in experiment
(For the sake of more collaborative conversations on HN, not just dissfests :)
Do you know anything about it? As far as the article goes, they just said it will be ready for production when the problem is solved, not how hard it is.
Very small amounts of oxygen in titanium are enough to make it too hard and too fragile for most applications.
Adding less harmful impurities to bind the more harmful impurities that cannot be otherwise removed (a.k.a. gettering) has always been a major purification technique, both in metallurgy and in semiconductor technology.
Steel is purified in the same way from the more harmful impurities, by adding other impurities like calcium, silicon or manganese or rare-earth metals.
In some cases, the compounds that result from adding impurities may be removed later, e.g. like slag floating on molten steel, but in other cases they may remain in the metal or semiconductor that is the desired end product.
It remains to be seen whether the extra yttrium and yttrium oxide that remain in titanium are harmful enough to make it worth to attempt to remove them somehow. In some cases they may even have beneficial properties, though e.g. for dental implants I would want commercially pure titanium that does not have any other metallic impurities like yttrium (commercially pure titanium includes small amounts of oxygen and of iron, both of which have no harmful effects in living tissues).
The reason? Titanium sucks to work with.
Machinists hate it, equipment hates it, cutting tools hate it, and it makes shavings that can burn hot enough to go right through equipment and concrete floors. That's what makes titanium parts so expensive, not just the material cost alone. It absolutely has properties that make it a perfect material for specific situations, but making it cheaper to buy definitely won't make titanium a common every day thing.
So - enjoy the science! Give a round of applause for the cool new method this team figured out. And then go back to appreciating how wild it is that titanium parts can even be produced at all, because holy smokes is it a pain in the rear in almost every way...
And I wouldn't overstate the machining difficulty. Sure, it's a pain in the rear, and expensive, but can be done on regular machines with the right tools, techniques, and processes. I've made a couple of titanium parts myself.
Like with aluminum, this high reactivity is masked in finite products made of titanium, because any titanium object is covered by a protective layer of titanium dioxide.
What is worse in titanium than in aluminum is that titanium has a low thermal conductivity, so a small part of the titanium can become very hot during processing, which does not happen with aluminum, where the remainder of the aluminum acts like a heatsink.
The hot spots that exist on titanium during processing, which do not exist on aluminum during processing, make titanium much more susceptible to reacting with the air or even to starting a fire.
Titanium, even as "commercially pure", has a much higher strength than aluminum, which requires higher forces for machining and increases even more the chances for overheating.
My understanding is that rust fails to protect iron the same way. Is that right? If so, why the difference?
This depends on the alloy involved as well. In general though rust is not a good iron protection.
In case of iron, oxidation occurs at different points on the surface and the oxide layer initially leaves most of the metal exposed. The oxide is also not effective at stopping oxygen, so the rust layers keeps growing until it forms flakes that fall, exposing more of the metal. The process repeats until all the metal is consumed.
I used to have a magnesium campfire starter. It was a little ingot of magnesium, with a long flint, embedded along one side.
You used your knife to shave some magnesium, then the flint, to set it ablaze.
Worked a treat.
The current level of workability and cost and alloying is after that chicken and egg. Titanium is expensive because it is hard to manufacture, not just hard to work with, which limits demand. Titanium, to what we now know, is what it is. It’s the nature of the material not a lack of investment.
More realistically, the ROI isn’t there for most applications. Good aluminum is pretty darn good, massively easier to work, cheaper, etc. newer super steels have even made serious inroads on titanium parts because of workability and toughness.
[0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/the-story-of-titanium
If something happens that ignites one of these pipelines there’s absolutely no way to put it out - it has the fuel (titanium) and oxidizer (chlorine) and burns mega-hot until one of them is fully consumed along the entire length of the pipeline. The pipelines can sometimes be shockingly long (1 mile-ish).
The safety and security implementation, including assorted regulations, certificates, processes, regulators and the like, is as neccessary as it's... vexing. :)
However, as you say, the processing costs from the raw metal to a finite product are much higher for titanium than for most cheap metals, mostly because of its low thermal conductivity (which makes titanium locally hot during processing) and its high reactivity with the atmosphere when hot, which is why the products made of titanium are expensive.
It is unlikely that titanium will ever replace stainless steel in most of its applications, but wherever the lower density of titanium or its better resistance against certain chemicals give great enough advantages, I hope to see more titanium objects.
I certainly like the titanium frame of my reading glasses, which is extremely thin and lightweight, almost invisible, while being much stronger and longer lived than a plastic frame would be.
Isn't that a problem for everything? That's the nature of heat.
For metals with high affinity to oxygen, like titanium, aluminum or magnesium, no temperatures attainable during normal processing are high enough to decompose their oxides, but the high temperatures increase by several orders of magnitude the speed of reaction with the air, in comparison with room temperature, where the speed of oxidation of titanium and aluminum becomes negligible immediately after the formation of a protective oxide layer.
Moreover, for such metals it may be more difficult to find even more reactive metals than them, which will extract oxygen from their oxides while not having other undesirable properties, like yttrium was found for titanium in the parent article. Yttrium is a metal with a reactivity not so great as calcium, but greater than magnesium, so also greater than titanium and aluminum. Neither calcium nor magnesium are suitable for removing oxygen from titanium, for various reasons, e.g. low boiling or melting temperatures, so yttrium is likely to create much less problems.
So the effects of heat are not always the same.
Steel has the nice property that if you stay under certain stress limits fatigue doesn't built up over time and so you can keep using it as long as you care to (or until salt gets it).
There are many countries where only a small percentage of the car owners also have garages, so the cars stay always outside, in rains and bad weather. Such cars rust completely far quicker than the cars kept in better conditions.
I had a car that I have used for 30 years and many hundred thousand miles, without having a garage. By its end of life, it still had many parts of the original motor, but from the original steel chassis there was nothing left. Every part of it had been replaced several times, due to excessive rust.
Unfortunately, even stainless steel is considered as too expensive by the car manufacturers, despite the fact that when we consider the total cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, with the need of replacing the rusted parts, the cost of stainless steel could have been less (but then customers would have been repealed by seeing higher upfront costs, without knowing how much they will spend on repairs in the future).
it is a lot titanium outthere in retail.
Then again iron suits of armour are not cheap (though cheaper than titanium), and are mostly useless in the real world - but people have them. If you have the money I won't object you to getting one.
Which is to say I'd expect a modern suit of armour to be made of kevlar.
BTW - might HEMA have any safety regs, for equipment that could become a Class D fire? There might be hazmat issues transporting such armour by air.
not anymore really. Kennametal and Sandvik all make insert tooling that will easily cut through Ti. Your multi-axis mills and CNC's will even track the tool wear for you and report when to replace. Titanium is no worse or better in your Haas than any other material in 2025.
and if youre still having problems, EDM will absolutely slice through it like butter.
nobody is working endmills or lathes with dry Ti and toolsteel in 2025. robots drown the piece in coolant and pick the right tools.
This is caused by fundamental properties of the metal, so it will not change in the future. Therefore machining titanium will always be more expensive than for steel or aluminum alloys or copper alloys.
Making titanium objects by casting is seldom a possible choice, because that is also much more expensive than for any other cheap metal, due to high melting temperature and the requirement to use an inert atmosphere.
Making titanium objects by plastic deformation is also expensive, because none of the titanium alloys has good ductility. The metals that are cheap to process by plastic deformation are those with a fcc crystal structure, like aluminum, copper and austenitic steel at room temperature, or like most steels at high temperature. The titanium alloys do not have such a crystal structure, so they cannot be deformed a lot without breaking.
One of the few processing methods where the titanium alloys do not have properties that increase the processing cost in comparison with other metals in 3D printing. However 3D printing is a relatively expensive processing method for any metal.
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4#Titanium_(2001-20...
What he told me is titanium is not expensive, but the problem is with the tooling. Expensive, hard to work with and energy intensive .
It was cheaper than I thought to grab a chunk of 99.9 pure from McMaster but dang it's tough stuff. Tools hate it. It's gummy.
Upshot is it can be anodized at home with stuff almost anyone has.
That said, carbide pwns, and if you can secure the piece well there's no reason it wouldn't get it done eventually. The diamond and HSS tips have taken awhile on other things for me unlike what you report with the carbide. I'd love to find out I'm mistaken in my guess.
I don't use a ton of steel but when I do I end up with hardened steel because i end up abrading instead of cutting haha. Might be better for normal stock, idk about already hardened.
Ill just add you can create some wild finishes with the Dremel alternating anodizing, Dremel, polish, Dremel. Using the brush, the cutter, whatever to mess with the surface.
Works great on tea, plain H20 and anything I've put in it. Non reactive as far as I can tell and rugged too.
What kind of tea? I did some (controlled but not blind) experiments a few years ago, and a titanium Snow Peak mug won the contest for rapid conversion of tasty green tea into a flavorless but similar colored substance hands down.
I do not actually believe that titanium is non-reactive to food, although it’s not aggressively reactive with tomatoes the way that aluminum or cast iron is.
Long ago when I had a reliable source for organic dragonwell, my favorite tea, I found it did perfectly. I admittedly may have compromised sensory, though I'm sincerely surprised (not skeptical) of your results.
It is probably me, as my benchmark for the best greens are, that left to steep, the leaves sink and do not float. And yes, I'm aware that it's said to increase heavy metal content of the brew. And yes, I'm also aware that this violates the tealitist convention.
However, imposter cups and imitations, which brands I won't name, I'd hesitate to use as bed pans.
Edit: it's worth adding that I almost never scrub it or use soap. The interior is stained, presumably with tannins
I definitely hit my cheap stainless containers with passivation, but hadn't thought to with titanium. Glad you mentioned it though, as someone is bound to pass by and learn of the concept and hopefully benefit from it, which I think can be pretty important with cheap stainless, for health purposes.
It could be interesting to experiment with anodized titanium. Apparently, one can fairly easily build up moderately thick oxide layers with various properties.
Anodization is really awesome when done properly. At the risk of exposing my inner moron, I must admit I was not aware that titanium was a candidate.
(I suppose the biggest expense is 9volts or a power supply but I am a guitar player so I just use my mostly spent pedal ones)
Titanium is basically as hard as al dente pasta, topping out around 40 HRC... which some composite plastics can approach. Meanwwhile even your crappy outdated stainless formulations from the 1940s can easily reach 60 HRC.
According to chatgpt, an apple watch weigh 61grams in hipster-loathing titanium. If you were to use stainless on that, it'd increase it by... 30grams. At it could be hardened to absurd levels (60+), to the point were scratching would only be possible by silica bearing materials like hard hard rock.
> A limitation of this work is that the resulting de-oxygenated titanium contains yttrium, up to 1% by mass; > After solving the yttrium contamination problem, applications to industrial manufacturing will be straightforward.
One wonders how much of a problem this is for most applications, and how easy it will be to solve...
How much does the yttrium matter? How likely is there to be a solution to that problem?
A limitation of this work is that the resulting de-oxygenated titanium contains yttrium, up to 1% by mass; yttrium can influence the mechanical and chemical properties of titanium alloy. After solving the yttrium contamination problem, applications to industrial manufacturing will be straightforward.
Any thoughts how they'll do that?
westurner•8mo ago
"Direct production of low-oxygen-concentration titanium from molten titanium" (2024) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49085-4
Animats•8mo ago
more_corn•8mo ago
metalman•8mo ago
from wiki: Small amounts of yttrium (0.1 to 0.2%) have been used to reduce the grain sizes of chromium, molybdenum, titanium, and zirconium.[81] Yttrium is used to increase the strength of aluminium and magnesium alloys.[15] The addition of yttrium to alloys generally improves workability, adds resistance to high-temperature recrystallization, and significantly enhances resistance to high-temperature oxidation (see graphite nodule discussion below).[68]
Yttrium can be used to deoxidize vanadium and other non-ferrous metals.[15] Yttria stabilizes the cubic form of zirconia in jewelry.[82]
Yttrium has been studied as a nodulizer in ductile cast iron, forming the graphite into compact nodules instead of flakes to increase ductility and fatigue resistance.[15] Having a high melting point, yttrium oxide is used in some ceramic and glass to impart shock resistance and low thermal expansion properties.[15] Those same properties make such glass useful in camera lenses.[51]
Medical
westurner•8mo ago
What is the most efficient and sustainable alternative to yttrium for removing oxygen from titanium?
process(TiO2, …) => Ti, …
westurner•8mo ago
> For primary titanium production (from ore): Molten Salt Electrolysis (Direct Electrochemical Deoxygenation, FFC Cambridge, OS processes, etc.) and calciothermic reduction in molten salts
> They aim to [sic.] revolutionize titanium production by moving away from the energy-intensive and environmentally impactful Kroll process, directly reducing TiO 2 and offering the potential for closed-loop systems.
> For recycling titanium scrap and deep deoxidation: Hydrogen plasma arc melting and calcium-based deoxidation techniques (especially electrochemical calcium generation) are highly promising. Hydrogen offers extreme cleanliness, while calcium offers potent deoxidizing power.
...
> Magnesium Hydride Reduction (e.g., University of Utah's reactor)
> Solid-State Reduction (e.g., Metalysis process)
Are there more efficient, sustainable methods of titanium production?
Also, TIL Ti is a catalyst for CNT carbon nanotube production; and, alloying CNTs with Ti leaves vacancies.
mmooss•8mo ago
What human?
meepmorp•8mo ago
You don't know enough about the subject to answer the question on your own, do you? So your "review" is really just cutting and pasting shit you also don't understand, which may or may not be true.
Thanks for your service.
westurner•8mo ago
Are any of those alternatives hallucinations, in your opinion?
I feel uncompleted to further assist these.
meepmorp•7mo ago
I don't have nearly enough knowledge or experience in the subject to talk about the factual accuracy of what you posted. The whole point of my comment was, neither do you.
westurner•7mo ago
You have made an assumption that I didn't review the content that I prepared to post. You have alleged in ignorance and you have disrespectfully harassed without due process.
I did not waste your time with spammy unlabeled AI BS.
I have given my "review search results" time for free; and, in this case too, I have delivered value. You made this a waste of my time. You have caused me loss with such harassment. I have not caused you loss by posting such preliminary research (which checks out).
Did others in this thread identify and share alternative solutions for getting oxygen out of titanium? I believe it was fair to identify and share alternative solutions to the OT which I (re-) posted because this is an unsolved opportunity.
I believe it's fair and advisable to consult and clearly cite AI.
Why would people cite their use of AI? Isn't that what we want?
Which helped solved for the OT problem?
Given such behavior toward me in this forum, I should omit such insightful research (into "efficient and sustainable alternatives") to deny them such advantage.
This was interesting to me and worth spending my personal time on also because removing oxygen from graphene oxide wafers is also a billion dollar idea. Does "hydrogen plasma" solve for deoxidizing that too?
digdugdirk•8mo ago
Its cool, and it has plenty of applications where it is the only choice. But those applications already use it, and lowering the material cost isn't going to make more designers decide to just start using it on a whim.
(PS - This could be more useful if titanium 3d printers start becoming more accessible. But again, that's a low volume manufacturing process so the material costs still don't play much into final part cost.)
Animats•8mo ago
Here's three generations of Space-X's Raptor engine.[1] The last one is mostly 3D printed. There are layers of different materials, and one is a titanium layer. Notice how the plumbing was simplified for each generation.
Rocket engines are mostly plumbing. The fuel is used to cool the engine bell before it is used for power. Everything has cooling cavities inside. All that interior geometry is ideal for 3D printing. In the NASA glory days, those things were built by hand welding large numbers of machined pieces into an engine. Look at that Raptor engine on the right. Everything below the pumps is all one big part. No joints, no welds, no brackets, no plumbing fittings. Nice.
[1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/08/spacex-reveals-raptor-...