Seversk Technological Institute of National Research Nuclear University “MEPhI”

V. A. Karelin, Professor, e-mail: vladimir@seversk.tomsknet.ru

E. N. Mikutskaya, Senior Lecturer

The brief review of industrial technologies of processing the titanium containing concentrates has been carried out. Drawbacks of existing schemes of titanium manufacture are shown and the necessity of essentially new fluoride technologies development has been proved. The reactions proceeding during fluorination of rutile concentrate with element fluoride are described in the given work. The thermodynamic research of the process was carried out with the use of the ASTRA computer program. We have shown that from the thermodynamic point of view the process of fluorination has no restrictions. Dependence of change of mass concentration of titanium tetra fluoride was investigated in products of reaction on the temperature of the process, and the choice of optimum surplus of element fluoride was proved. The equilibrium composition of fluorination products of rutile concentrate was determined at the chosen surplus of fluoride. The basic stages of process were described and its kinetic features were studied. The factors influencing the fluorination speed were determined. Mathematical processing of the research results showed that for the description of fluorination kinetics it was necessary to use Yander’s equation. It was established, that the process is limited by some diffusion factors, such as supply of a fluorinating reagent to a surface of a solid material. The activation energy of fluorination process was determined. The conditions of the process carrying out on industrial equipment were discussed.

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