PM Review Winter 2023

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Titanium offers unique strength, lightweighting, and corrosion-resistant properties, making it a highly sought-after metal for various applications. However, its high cost and complex manufacturing process have limited its use. To combat this, IperionX has developed technologies that offer a costeffective and sustainable solution for titanium production. Its Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction (HAMR) and Hydrogen-Sintering and Phase Transformation (HSPT) processes promise a more affordable and environmentally friendly approach that reduces dependency on the import of critical materials.

Titanium is unique among metals. Across numerous applications, titanium alloys are preferable to the more common structural stainless steel and aluminium alloys. Titanium is strong, lightweight, and highly corrosion resistant, making it the ideal metal for broad applications in defence, aerospace, space exploration, transportation and electric vehicles, unmanned vehicles, and many other advanced manufacturing applications. Unlike stainless steel and aluminium, however, titanium is expensive and difficult to process. This means titanium is typically reserved for only the highest value applications: jet engines, naval applications, medical implants, and, of course, Iron Man’s suit. There is, however, a reliance in many countries on imported titanium feedstock. As an example, the US is a leading consumer of titanium metal for aerospace and defence applications, but has no upstream domestic production capacity, leaving it highly reliant, leaving it highly reliant on titanium feedstock imports to service

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these multi-billion-dollar industries. Primary titanium metal manufacturing capacity is now almost non-existent in the US, with the last domestic plant shutting down in 2020. As of 2023, the current US titanium metal demand from

the aerospace, medical, space and defence sectors is heavily reliant on international supply chains, which are dominated by production from China and Russia. Not only are these supply chains environmentally and societally unsustainable, but this

Fig. 1 Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a pilot facility in Salt Lake City Utah and a soon-to-be-commissioned commercial production in South Boston, Virginia, IperionX’s mission is to be a leading developer of US-based sustainable critical mineral and critical material supply chains, starting with titanium, to facilitate the global transition towards low carbon, resource efficient manufacturing (Courtesy IperionX)

Winter 2023

PM Review

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IperionX: A Powder Metallurgy route to lower-cost recycled titanium plate, billet, bar and preforms with reduced CO 2 emissions

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IperionX

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