Zak Fang Wins Humboldt Award

Zhigang “Zak” Fang, FAPMI, materials sciences and metallurgical engineering professor, University of Utah, is the recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Research Award. Fang has developed a breakthrough technology that can produce high-quality, low-carbon emitting titanium powder at a significantly reduced cost. Known as the Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction (HAMR) process, the technology developed by Fang is based on the discovery of new science about the effects of hydrogen on the stability of titanium solid solutions with high oxygen content (up to 14wt%.)

Titanium (Ti) metal, prized for its high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance and biocompatibility, is a critical material in aerospace, defense, and medical applications, but its wider use is obstructed by excessively high costs.

“Titanium metal is difficult to produce because of its strong affinity to oxygen,” said Fang, who was notified earlier this month about the Humboldt, which promotes scientific cooperation between research institutions in the U.S. and Germany. He discovered that the bond between titanium and oxygen can be destabilized by inserting hydrogen atoms into the Titanium (II) oxide (Ti-O) solid solution lattices, leading to the completely new approach for sustainably producing low oxygen titanium with minimum energy and cost.

“By dramatically reducing the cost and carbon dioxide emissions of producing titanium powder, the HAMR process has the potential to fundamentally disrupt and transform the global titanium metal industry,” continued Fang.

Today, the U.S. imports almost 100% of the “titanium sponge” it consumes each year, made by an older process that is inefficient, expensive, and energy intensive. China and Russia control ~70% of the global market for titanium sponge, creating a significant supply chain vulnerability for a metal critical to America’s national defense. The current market process for creating titanium metal heats titanium ore to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and reacts with chlorine gas and petroleum coke to produce titanium tetrachloride. That chemical compound is purified, reduced by molten magnesium in an argon atmosphere for up to four days, and then vacuum-distilled into the porous, brittle form of titanium known as “sponge. It is then crushed and melted to make ingots and other titanium mill deliverables that are sent to the manufacturers of titanium products.

Zak Fang, professor of metallurgical engineering (right) and Pei Sun, research associate in the Powder Metallurgy Research Lab (left) describe the process to reduce commercial titanium dioxide into the final pure titanium powder. Photo Credit: University of Utah

Fang’s research, which led to the HAMR technology, promises to improve energy efficiency drastically. The HAMR process can produce primary titanium metal from either minerals or from titanium scrap. The result is that high-oxygen titanium scrap is transformed into low-oxygen titanium powders that meet or exceed stringent aerospace and biomedical industry standards.

Titanium powder can be used for additive manufacturing or utilized by powder metallurgy to manufacture products in a broad range of demanding applications, including aerospace, defense, biomedical, and other civilian applications, with dramatically increased sustainability.