The TiRO process is a new process for producing titanium metal. The traditional Kroll process is an energy-intensive batch process that produces bulk metal that must be melted and cast to create Titanium parts. Each cycle of melting and casting degrades a proportion of the titanium stock to unusable nitrides, which are lost to the process cycle.
TiRO is an advanced continuous feed process that uses a fluidised bed reactor and vacuum sublimation chamber to produce Titanium powder under an Argon atmosphere. The powder can be processed directly into titanium parts using standard powder metallurgy techniques with no loss of product to the processing cycle.
TiRO was initially developed by CSIRO and commercialised in partnership with Coogee Chemicals. The first step in this partnership was to migrate the lab-bench prototype to a multi-function pilot scale plant capable of producing product in commercially usable quantities.
