Direct oxygen removal technique for recycling titanium using molten MgCl2 salt.

Deoxidation of Ti, or direct removal of O dissolved in metallic Ti, is known to be extremely difficult when Mg is used as the deoxidizing agent. This difficulty arises because the chemical potential of O2, pO2, under Mg/MgO equilibrium is high (approximately 10(-41) atm at 1200 K) and is equivalent to that of Ti containing ∼2 mass% O at 1200 K. Therefore, when deoxidizing Ti to the commercial level of high-grade pure Ti (below 0.