Novel process for smelting production of high-purity zirconium by adopting aluminium reduction and high-energy electron beam

Abstract

The invention relates to a novel process for smelting production of high-purity zirconium by adopting aluminium reduction and high-energy electron beam. The novel process mainly comprises the following steps: carrying out reduction reaction of K2ZrF6 under a certain temperature and inert environment by adopting a reducing agent, namely metal aluminium powder, so as to obtain reduction products, namely powdery Zr, KF and AlF3, then, separating out KF and AlF3 in the products by distilling and sintering at high temperature in vacuum so as to prepare sponge zirconium having higher purity, and finally, bombarding and smelting the sponge zirconium through the high-energy electron beam for 2-3 times to remove impurities in the sponge zirconium so as to finally obtain a high-purity zirconium ingot conforming to industrial standards.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a production process of zirconium, in particular to a new process for producing high-purity zirconium by using aluminum reduction and high-energy electron beam smelting. Background technique [0002] There have been examples of reducing potassium fluorozirconate with metals such as sodium and calcium in the traditional process, but since the powdered metal zirconium produced by this method is dispersed in the molten salt, it is not conducive to the collection of the product and it is difficult to clean the product. Other compounds can be recycled, and the final product is only zirconium powder. To make zirconium materials for various accessories, powder metallurgy or other smelting processes are required to cast ingots. The process is complicated, the production cost is high, and it pollutes the water body. [0003] At present, the main process for producing zirconium metal at home and abroad is the Kroll method, which is based...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Due to TiCl 4 and ZrCl 4 The properties are similar. This method is used in the production of metal zirconium and has become the main method for industrial production of zirconium. Although for a long time, many improvements have been made to this method, such as continuous research, boiling chlorination, joint operations and A lot of work has been done on its large-scale production, but none of them have fundamentally solved the existing problems of high cost, heavy pollution, complicated operation, low reduction efficiency, and complicated process flow.