The construction of China's titanium metal industrial chain has achieved remarkable success

After 70 years of development, China's titanium metal industry has now become the world's largest producer and consumer of titanium metal. From a cumulative production of 1,000 tons over ten years in the 1970s, to 10,000 tons in the 1990s, and then to 100,000 tons in 2021, China's titanium metal output now accounts for 65% of the global total and is widely used in various fields of the national economy and national defense modernization. Li Zhen, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and general manager of Ansteel Group, introduced. The achievements made in the construction of China's titanium metal industrial chain can be summarized in four aspects: First, a new breakthrough has been achieved in resource utilization efficiency. China's ilmenite reserves account for 30.4% of the global total, ranking first in the world. However, efficient utilization has not been achieved yet. Since the National Development and Reform Commission established the Panxi Strategic Resources Innovation and Development Pilot Zone in 2013, the comprehensive utilization rate of titanium resources has increased from 17% to 35%, and the output of titanium concentrate has risen to the top of the world. Second, a new pattern has been formed in the construction of the industrial system. After decades of development, the Panxi region, relying on Ansteel, has formed a initially complete titanium industrial chain from titanium raw materials to titanium products. Xinjiang, Yunnan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have also formed titanium metal industrial clusters with their own characteristics. Third, the level of technological equipment has reached a new stage. Through the introduction, absorption and digestion, as well as independent manufacturing, China has equipped a series of titanium metal manufacturing equipment with international advanced levels. The automatic weighing and mixing system for the titanium smelting process, 10,000-ton electrode press, large VAR furnace, high-power EB furnace, large-tonnage fast forging machine, ring forging machine, extruder and high-precision rolling mill have all been equipped in batches. Fourth, new space has been opened up in the application fields of the products. While the production and manufacturing system of titanium metal is developing, China has simultaneously established a "research - design - application" system, which has enabled titanium metal to be widely applied in fields such as nuclear power, Marine deep-sea submersibles, petrochemical equipment, ships and seawater desalination. In recent years, Ansteel has focused on strengthening, extending and supplementing the titanium metal industrial chain, forming a vertically integrated titanium metal industrial system covering ilmenite mining and selection, sponge titanium metallurgy, titanium metal smelting, titanium material processing and application. This has created favorable conditions for building a modern titanium metal new material industrial chain based on domestic resources to support the national strategy. In recent years, Ansteel has overcome world-class challenges in the recovery technology of ultrafine-grained ilmenite, increasing the output of titanium concentrate from 700,000 tons to 1.8 million tons. The technology for extracting titanium from blast furnace slag has gradually matured. The 100,000-ton industrial demonstration line independently designed and built has fully achieved full production capacity. The utilization rate of titanium resources will increase by more than 20 percentage points, and it is expected to form a disruptive process technology. Li Zhen introduced. Meanwhile, Ansteel is focusing on ecological coupling and promoting the coordinated development of enterprises along the industrial chain. On the procurement side, in 2024, Ansteel will carry out supply cooperation in the titanium metal industry chain with over 600 domestic and foreign enterprises, with related procurement amounting to more than 5 billion yuan. On the sales side, Ansteel will supply 1.1 million tons of titanium concentrate and 35,000 tons of sponge titanium to the downstream in 2024, accounting for approximately one fifth of the domestic supply, providing stable and reliable titanium metal raw materials for the industrial chain. On the innovation side, Ansteel invests 150 million yuan annually in the research and development of the entire titanium metal industry chain, promoting technological progress and industrial agglomeration development in the industry's titanium raw materials, sponge titanium, titanium materials and other links. Steel and titanium not only coexist in the resource end but also have highly coordinated conditions in the manufacturing end. Compared with the steel industry, which often has a scale of tens of millions of tons, the titanium metal industry is still in a period of cultivation and rapid development, and its scale is relatively small. Ansteel Group has taken the lead in carrying out the construction of a modern industrial chain for titanium metal new materials, which not only injects new impetus into the development of the titanium metal industry but also brings new vitality to the transformation and upgrading of steel enterprises. Luo Tiejun affirmed. However, there are also certain limiting factors in the application of titanium alloys. The main limiting factor for the current non-selection of titanium alloys for structural components such as the skin, frame, and beam of civil aircraft is that although titanium alloys have a higher specific strength than aluminum alloys, under the same strength requirements, to ensure processability, the body structure must guarantee a certain thickness dimension, which will lead to the waste of the design margin of titanium alloys, and the density of titanium alloys is greater than that of aluminum alloys. It brings additional weight and the economic effect is not obvious. Wu Guanghui, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, chief scientist of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and chief designer of the C919 large passenger aircraft series, said.