Japan Titanium Society Celebrates Its 70th Anniversary By Motoi Miki, Executive Director JTS
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irst of all, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to post an article in TITANIUM TODAY. The International Titanium Association and JTS have had a long cooperative relationship. We would like to continue working together to contribute to the development of the world’s titanium industry. Here, we will introduce JTS and the Japanese titanium industry, both of which have celebrated their 70th anniversary.
Japan Titanium Society 70th anniversary party
History of Japanese Titanium Industry and JTS Japanese titanium industry started in 1952, following the United States. On the other hand, the Japan Titanium Society was established in 1952 at the dawn of the Japanese titanium industry as the world’s first titanium-related organization. In 1952, there were ten titanium smelters in Japan. Of these, only two still exist: Osaka Titanium Technologies and Toho Titanium. Japanese sponge titanium production reached 2,500 to 3,000 tons a year between 1956 and 1959, most of which was exported to the United States for use in Cold War fighter engines. For seven years after Japan’s defeat in the Pacific war, the occupation army GHQ prohibited Japan to develop and manufacture aircraft, so the aircraft industry, which is an important use of titanium, did not grow in Japan. The expansion of titanium wrought materials in Japan 54
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was supported by the development of applications in fields other than aircraft. In the 1960s, it began to be applied to chemical manufacturing equipment. It is used for the lining of reaction vessels and reaction towers, electrodes, etc., which require corrosion resistance. Since the latter half of the 1970s, it has been used in power plant condensers. From the 1970s, it was used for watch cases and bands, and from the 1980s, it was used for eyeglass frames. It is used for weight reduction and biocompatibility. The shipment volume of wrought titanium material increased, reaching 7,700 tons in 1982. JTS also sent technical missions to the Middle East six times between 1984 and 1999 with the aim of applying welded titanium tubes to seawater desalination plants. Thanks to this, it was adopted for a largescale seawater desalination plant. Since the latter half of the 1980s, it
has been used for roofs and walls of modern architecture, taking advantage of titanium’s life cycle cost, weight reduction, and design. Since 2010, it has been used for the roofs of traditional Japanese architecture such as temples and shrines. Since the mid-1990s, it has been used in golf drivers due to its light weight, large size, and high repulsion performance, and has been favored by most golfers. It is also used in mufflers for mass-produced motorcycles due to its weight reduction, pleasant exhaust sound, and burnt color. It is also used in connecting rods and valve retainers made of titanium alloys, and has begun to be applied to computer and camera cases, reaching over 10,000 tons in 1997, and 19,700 tons in 2008. In this way, as the demand for titanium increased, the number of companies involved in the titanium industry and those considering entering the industry increased. In 2014, it was adopted as a separator for the fuel cell installed