Cold Wall Melting and Pouring of Titanium (COLDMELT)

Production of titanium is at a record level and is in a dynamic growth phase driven by
demand by the aerospace industry and social trends to reduce transport energy
costs and wasteful corrosion utilising titanium's light weight and corrosion resistance.
The requirement for the world to lower carbon emissions is also driving demand for
lightweight transport structures and components. The project will address two major problems limiting the introduction of titanium components made by powder metallurgy into a range of industries ranging from aerospace to general engineering. These are a) conventional processing cannot guarantee clean, ceramic inclusion-free powders b) high cost of powders. It will achieve these objectives by the development of a novel "cold crucible" gas atomiser to produce powders on a continuous (low cost) basis and exclude the use of conventional (contamination) ceramics for the handling of liquid titanium. The main thrust of the project is to lower cost and produce clean powder to
aerospace requirements. However, new technical features will allow novel titanium
alloy powder compositions to be more conveniently produced in addition to CP and
6/4 grades, e.g. NiTi, TiAl and nickel aluminides. This aligns with "development of
lightweight applications". The project is innovative in that continuous gas atomisation of titanium on a commercial scale has never been demonstrated.