The Discovery of Titanium Research Paper

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What is Titanium?

The symbol for the metal titanium in the Periodic Table is Ti, which is a direct abbreviation of the metal’s name. The metal was discovered in Great Britain—Cornwall to be exact—by a clergyman and mineralogist named William Gregor in 1791. However, Gregor did not actually get to name the element—at least not as it is commonly recognized today: that honor was taken by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist who had discovered uranium and zirconium two years prior and who would later go on to discover cerium in 1803. Klaproth discovered titanium independently of Gregor in 1793 and, unaware that it was the same substance identified by Gregor, named it titanium after the Greek gods the Titans, because in his view it was “the incarnation of natural strength” (“History of Titanium”). Gregory had named it “gregorite” two years before and needless to say Klaproth’s appellate is what stuck.

Regardless, titanium was not actually isolated for more than another century—in 1910. Titanium thus occurs naturally as part of chemical combinations. It is most often found in rutile and ilmenite, and it is actually the ninth most common element in the earth’s crust, where it makes up almost a quarter of the crust. As the 22nd element on the Periodic Table, it has a weight of 47.867amu and a low density of 4510 kg/m3, which is about 60% lower than the density of steel (“History of Titanium”).

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It is very corrosion-resistant with a high passivity and it is also nontoxic and thus is used in medical implants in humans.

Klaproth discovered his titanium source in a sample of rutile, which he had obtained from Boinik, and also from a sample of manaccanite, which is what Gregor discovered his in (Krebs). The reason it took so long to isolate titanium is because the process to do so is costly. The element can be isolated by heating with carbon, as is done in the process of iron smelting, because the element then binds with the carbon to create titanium carbide (Emsley). It was not until 1932 that William Kroll, the metallurgist famous for developing the Kroll method of isolating titanium for commercial purposes, showed that it could be extracted from ore by reducing titanium tetrachloride with calcium—and then later magnesium and sodium, which is the process still used mainly in the commercial isolation of titanium today (Krebs).

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