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 Titanium dioxide, also known as titanium(IV) oxide or titania, is the naturally occurring oxide of titanium, chemical formula TiO2. When used as a pigment, it is called titanium white, Pigment White 6, or CI 77891. It is noteworthy for its wide range of applications, from paint to sunscreen to food colouring.
Titanium dioxide occurs in four forms:
- rutile, a tetragonal mineral usually of prismatic habit, often twinned;
- anatase or octahedrite, a tetragonal mineral of dipyramidal habit;
- brookite, an orthorhombic mineral. Both anatase and brookite are relatively rare minerals;
- Titanium dioxide (B) or TiO2(B), a monoclinic mineral.
Titanium dioxide occurrences in nature are never pure; it is found with contaminant metals such as iron. The oxides can be mined and serve as a source for commercial titanium. The metal can also be mined from other minerals such as ilmenite or leucoxene ores, or one of the purest forms, rutile beach sand. Star sapphires and rubies get their asterism from rutile impurities present in them.
Production
Crude titanium dioxide is purified via titanium tetrachloride in the Chloride process. In this process, the crude ore (containing at least 90% TiO2) is reduced with carbon, oxidized with chlorine to give titanium tetrachloride. This titanium tetrachloride is distilled, and re-oxidized with oxygen to give pure titanium dioxide.
Another widely used process utilizes ilmenite as the titanium dioxide source, which is digested in sulfuric acid. The by-product iron(II) sulfate is crystallized and filtered-off to yield only the titanium salt in the digestion solution, which is processed further to give pure titanium dioxide. |
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