A comparative study on the chloride effectiveness of synthetic rutile and natural rutile manufactured from ilmenite ore

Studies on continuous and selective chlorination by using ilmenite have been actively conducted because the efficient removal of FeO from ilmenite(FeTiO₃) ore using selective chlorination not only improves the reaction purity of TiCl₄ but it also leads to price competitiveness compared to TiCl₄ synthesized from natural rutile. The chlorination of synthetic rutile with FeO removed was compared with that of natural rutile to examine the reaction efficiency. The selective chlorination efficiency depends on the input amounts of coke and Cl₂, as shown by thermodynamic calculation, when FeO is selectively removed. It was found that manufacturing of TiCl₄ was easier by using the synthetic rutile, because it had greater porosity than natural rutile. Relatively greater pore volumes were found in the synthetic rutile than in natural rutile. It was confirmed that the reaction efficiency of chlorination for TiCl₄ production was directly related to the difference in the porosity distribution between the titanium ores, as verified by a kinetic comparison of synthetic and natural rutiles.