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Titanium: Titanium Tetrachloride Heated with Sodium in a Steel Bomb (Hunter, Thorpe 1913)
Charlie

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Charlie

1. November 2026DE
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Titanium: Titanium Tetrachloride Heated with Sodium in a Steel Bomb (Hunter, Thorpe 1913)

Sodium strips the chlorine from titanium tetrachloride inside a sealed steel bomb, leaving titanium metal in common salt. Result: very pure titanium that looks like polished steel; hard and brittle cold, forgeable at low red heat, melting at 1800–1850 °C. Source: Thorpe, Dictionary of Applied Chemistry vol. 5 (1913), p. 501, after Hunter (J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 1910, 32, 330). Thorpe does not say how the titanium is freed from the salt; ours follows Nagesh, Titanium Extraction Metallurgy (IntechOpen, 2023). Picture drawn by Youblob.
Advanced
1 day

Instructions

1

Charge the steel bomb

Weigh pure titanium tetrachloride and about half its weight of sodium into a steel bomb, and close it.

Materials for this step:

Titanium TetrachlorideTitanium Tetrachloride1 as required

Tools needed:

SodiumSodium
Precision Digital Scale — 0.01gPrecision Digital Scale — 0.01g
Steel BombSteel Bomb
2

Heat to low red heat

Heat the bomb to a low red heat. Ours: a muffle furnace.

Tools needed:

Muffle FurnaceMuffle Furnace
Crucible TongsCrucible Tongs
3

Free the titanium

Ours, after Nagesh, Titanium Extraction Metallurgy (IntechOpen, 2023): leach the reaction product with water, which dissolves the sodium chloride and the leftover sodium and leaves the titanium. Leftover sodium reacts violently with water and gives off hydrogen: add the product to the water a little at a time, away from flames. Ours: dry the metal in an oven.

Tools needed:

WaterWater
Glass BeakerGlass Beaker
Drying OvenDrying Oven

Materials

1

Tools Required

8

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