Newly patented TiO2 process looks to sweep the industry

10 May 2002 11:13  [Source: ICIS news]

The owners of a newly patented production process for titanium dioxide (TiO2) believe their process eventually will replace the dominant chloride and sulphate processes that now account for the world's 3.5m tonne/year of TiO2 output. But they expect it may take a decade for their revolution to overtake the $8bn (Euro8.8bn) market.

Altair Nanotechnologies Inc (ANI) of Reno, Nevada received a US patent on 23 April for its TiO2 production process, and company president Kenneth Lyon says ANI is on its way to commercialising "the first complete process to make TiO2 pigment from ore concentrates since the DuPont chloride process patents were awarded in the 1950s".

Lyon believes the Altair TiO2 pigment process will penetrate the market chiefly because of its advantages of economy, product quality and refinement and the process's more friendly environmental profile.

He says the Altair process has the same or lower capital cost than the chloride process and a better economic cost than the sulphate process, and that is without considering the costs of environmental remediation that both the sulphate and chloride processes incur but which the Altair process escapes because all its reagents are recycled.

"One of the major features of the Altair process," said Lyon, "is its low environmental impact compared with chloride and sulphate. We recover and recycle the chloride values so you don't have to dispose of them." The Altair process also generates iron oxide as a by-product, which Lyon notes is environmentally harmless and "has potential for value as a by-product but one we haven't developed for now".

But perhaps the process' greatest advantage in terms of the marketplace is its ability to control the size of TiO2 particles and its much narrower range of particle distribution, according to Eugene Thiers, director of technology commercialisation for SRI International of Menlo Park, California. SRI has been retained by Altair to assist in Altair's licensing effort.

"This process," said Thiers, "can control particle size and distribution of pigment better than any other process. The level of control is almost total." The Altair process can, he continued, consistently produce specific particle sizes for specific applications, such as 0.2 micron particles for optimum use in paints. But, Thiers notes, current TiO2 production processes typically generate particles across a distribution range that is plus or minus 30% of the target particle size. The Altair system, he said, can produce paint pigment to within 5% plus or minus of the ideal 0.2 micron size.

The result, says SRI, is a higher quality TiO2 that will meet increasing demand for refined and more application-specific product. Thiers predicts that size control and a narrow distribution range will have high appeal for applications in the three major market segments for TiO2, paints, paper and plastics. Those applications segments account for 80% of TiO2, with the remainder of the market spread among textiles, ceramics, building supplies and other miscellaneous applications. But there, too, said Thiers, the Altair process offers the same "primary quality parameter".

The Altair process also is said to work very well on low grade, fine particle feedstocks, and SRI notes that most of the remaining TiO2 deposits in the world are not top quality.

Lyon said that so far Altair has not made a major effort to market licences for the new process. "Until we had the patent in hand, we didn't want to talk about it too much," he said. Still, he reports that Altair is already in discussion with two unspecified European TiO2 producers which use the sulphate process and which "have some environmental considerations". And he is in talks with an unnamed Asian producer as well.

None of the major US producers of TiO2 - DuPont, Kerr McGee, NL Industries and Millennium - reached by CI had heard of the Altair process. Lyon said he has had indirect feedback from one major producer whose reaction was "mixed."

It will take time for the technology to work into the TiO2 industry, Lyon said. "The way new technologies come into an established industry is when the majors begin to look for alternative means when they are under pressure from environmental or economic demands."

"My guess is," said Lyon, "that this process will penetrate the industry piece by piece. When some smaller TiO2 plants are built and when some major plants are retrofitted to improve production, it will gain ground. Sooner or later someone will use it when building a major facility." But he said no major producer is going to shut down a large, high-capital facility just to switch to a new technology.

"I think they'll need to turn to it [the Altair process] over time," Lyon said. "There are continuing environmental pressures and a continuing need for better product. They'll come around."

By Joe Kamalick of CNI

By: Gary Taylor
+1 713 525 2653

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