Ilmenite
Iron titanium oxide — the abundant titanium ore, lower grade than rutile and the source of most titanium actually produced.
Ilmenite is an iron titanium oxide and the ore that most titanium actually comes from, despite rutile being the better feed. The reason is simple abundance: ilmenite is common and rutile is not, and the cost of removing the iron is less than the cost of the scarcity.
That removal is the whole of ilmenite's processing story. The iron is stripped out — by smelting to a titanium-rich slag, or by leaching — to produce a synthetic concentrate that stands in for rutile in the same downstream plant.
How to identify it
Ilmenite is black, metallic to submetallic, weakly magnetic, and gives a black streak — which separates it from rutile's pale brown one and from hematite's red. It is heavy but noticeably less so than galena.
Extraction
Most ilmenite comes from the same heavy mineral sand deposits as rutile and zircon, separated by density, magnetism and electrical conductivity. Some is mined from hard rock intrusions, where it occurs alongside magnetite in layered bodies.
How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.
How this connects
Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.
is an ore of
- Titanium — element · the volume source, upgraded to remove the iron before use Wikidata
is an input to
- Kroll process — process · after the iron is stripped out to make a synthetic rutile substitute
is a component of
- Kimberlite — rock · as magnesian picroilmenite, one of the indicator minerals used to trace a pipe from the stream sediment downstream of it
- Gabbro — rock · with magnetite in the iron-titanium oxide layers, which are worked for titanium and vanadium as well as iron
is an alternative to
- Rutile — mineral · as a titanium feedstock. Rutile is the better feed at around ninety-five per cent titanium dioxide against ilmenite's fifty, and ilmenite supplies most of the world's titanium anyway because there is far more of it
Sources
- Material WorldOur own writing
- Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
- COD Advisory Board / Vilnius University · CC0 — contributors place data in the public domain