金属ジノレコニウム製造の一体化プロセス

抄録

An advanced reduction process for producing zirconium sponge was proposed and verified in a pilot scale of 50kgs per batch. The process employs a combined reduction-distillation process and a new ZrCl₄ feeding system. This process has the same advantages over the conventional process as the combined process for titanium production.
One charactetistic feature of this new process is employing a fused salt bath as the ZrCl₄ sublimer. Fused salt is an excellent media for heat transfer. The composition of the fused salt bath is NaCl-KCl-ZrCl₄. This fused salt sublimer has two functions. One is to control the feeding rate of ZrCl₄ vapor to the reduction furnace and the other is to purify ZrCl₄. Therefore it becomes easier than the conventional process to control ZrCl₄ feed rate, and it becomes possible to feed ZrCl₄ to the reduction furnace in a rate much higher than theconventional process. Moreover, an excellent-quality of zirconium sponge was achieved owing to the purification effect of ZrCl₄ by fused salt bath. Oxygen content of the sponge is reduced remarkably, and other impurity levels in the sponge is sufficiently low.