Titanium Sponge Plant is an Indian

manufacturing plant A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an Industry (manufacturing), industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with Outline of industrial machinery, machinery, where workers manufacturing, manufac ...

that produces

titanium sponge Titanium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in se ...

, a material widely used in aeronautics, light defence vehicles, and other applications. It is located at Kerala Minerals and Metals Ltd ( KMML), Chavara,

Kollam Kollam (;), is an ancient seaport and the List of cities and towns in Kerala, fourth largest city in the Indian state of Kerala. Located on the southern tip of the Malabar Coast of the Arabian Sea, the city is on the banks of Ashtamudi Lake ...

district of

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

. Notably, It is the only plant in the world that carries out the entire aerospace-grade titanium sponge manufacturing process under one roof.

History

The importance of establishing domestic titanium production was realised due to India's significant demand for titanium and magnesium alloys, which were predominantly imported from countries such as China, Russia, and Japan. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a scientist and the former President of India, highlighted the issue in a speech at the Kerala Legislative Assembly. The plant was fully commissioned in August 2015.

Establishment

The successful implementation was achieved after about twenty years of continuous research by the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory ( DMRL under

DRDO The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is an agency under the Department of Defence Research and Development in the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India, charged with the military's research and development, headqu ...

). The project is funded by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre ( VSSC under

ISRO The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...

Ranking

India is the seventh country in the world to have such a complex structured TSP which has the technology to make titanium sponge, and the first to have done the entire process under one roof in an indigenous manner. The company, Kerala Minerals and Metals Ltd. (KMML), has also won awards for commercialising this technology.

Design and capacity

The plant has an intricate design to carry out manufacturing of titanium alloy wrought products and fabrication of hardware. Titanium sponge is an alloy product that is produced through the

Kroll process The Kroll process is a pyrometallurgical industrial process used to produce metallic titanium from titanium tetrachloride. As of 2001 William Justin Kroll's process replaced the Hunter process for almost all commercial production. Process In the ...

, which includes leaching or heated vacuum distillation to make the metal almost 99.7% pure. Work is being done actively to increase the capacity of the TSP (Titanium Sponge Plant) for the proposed 10000 TPY (Tons Per Year). A memorandum of understanding has also been signed by the KMML with

Steel Authority of India Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) is an Indian public sector steel manufacturing corporation based in New Delhi. It is the largest government-owned steel producer, with an annual production of 18.29 million metric tons. Incorporated on 24 ...

(SAIL) for a joint venture to prepare titanium sponge at large scale. India has the third-largest reserves of Titanium containing minerals and was the sixth-largest country in Titanium production in 2013. However, the high purity Titanium sponge (defined as containing at least 99.7% Titanium) as raw material is still imported for aerospace applications from countries like Japan, Russia, and China. Using the indigenously made titanium sponge, VSSC realized the aerospace-grade alloy, having formula Ti₆Al₄V, at Mishra Dhatu Nigam (Midhani) in Hyderabad.

Future prospects

Proposals for future work include magnesium recovery from MgCl₂ (

magnesium chloride Magnesium chloride is an inorganic compound with the formula . It forms hydrates , where ''n'' can range from 1 to 12. These salts are colorless or white solids that are highly soluble in water. These compounds and their solutions, both of which ...

) to set up an additional facility on similar lines, as well as to expand titanium production capacity from 500 MT to 1000 MT.

References

{{reflist Manufacturing plants Titanium companies Aerospace materials