Titanium: Extraction

Dredging ancient beaches for heavy mineral sands

Most titanium comes from ilmenite and rutile in heavy-mineral sands, dredged or surface-mined from old beaches and dunes. Zircon, monazite and abrasive sands are coproducts, as at the US operations in Georgia and Florida. Some ilmenite comes from hard-rock titaniferous magnetite, smelted to a high-TiO2 slag in Canada, South Africa and Madagascar. Ilmenite makes up about 90% of titanium mineral consumption. Concentrates are upgraded and turned into pigment. A small share is chlorinated and reduced with magnesium to porous sponge metal.

Titanium starts as two minerals: lower-grade ilmenite, an iron-titanium oxide, and high-grade rutile (traded at a minimum 95% TiO2, USGS). Most come from heavy-mineral sands, which also yield zircon and monazite, so a sands mine sells a basket of products. Low-grade ilmenite is upgraded to slag or synthetic rutile because the cleaner chloride pigment process needs high-TiO2 feed. About 90% of feedstock ends up as pigment. A small share is chlorinated and reduced with magnesium to sponge metal, a costly batch process that only a few countries run.

Methods compared

How each method works

A floating dredge or earthmovers feed sand to a wet concentrator of spirals, producing heavy-mineral concentrate of a few percent of the ore. A dry plant then separates ilmenite (magnetic), rutile and zircon (non-magnetic, split by conductivity) and monazite. Tailings are returned and the land rehabilitated.

Low-cost, multi-product mines; product prices move differently, and coastal sites face long permitting.

Ilmenite or titaniferous magnetite from hard-rock or sands deposits is smelted with coal in electric furnaces. Iron separates as high-purity pig iron and the titanium reports to a slag of 80-95% TiO2 that feeds pigment plants.

Upgrades low-grade ore and earns iron credits; electricity-intensive.

Ilmenite is reduced in a coal-fired kiln to metallic iron, which is then rusted out and leached away, leaving high-TiO2 grains for chloride pigment and metal plants.

Makes premium chloride feed from cheaper ilmenite; kilns are energy- and emissions-intensive.

In the chloride process, high-grade feed is chlorinated with coke to titanium tetrachloride, purified and burnt with oxygen to pigment. In the sulfate process, ilmenite or slag is dissolved in sulfuric acid, hydrolysed and calcined. Pigment is then milled and surface-coated.

Chloride gives purer pigment and less waste but needs high-grade feed; sulfate takes cheap ilmenite but makes more waste.

Purified titanium tetrachloride is fed onto molten magnesium in a sealed steel reactor; magnesium chloride forms and is drained, leaving a cake of porous sponge. The magnesium chloride is electrolysed back to magnesium and chlorine.

Proven route for aerospace-grade metal; slow batch process with high energy and capital costs.

Share produced as a by-product

Who does it: global

Who does it: India

India mined 240 kt TiO2 of ilmenite and 13 kt of rutile in 2025, has 15 Mt of ilmenite and 670 kt of rutile reserves (USGS), and makes small amounts of sponge (300 t) and pigment (91 kt capacity). It exported $66.9 million and imported $69.8 million of titanium ores in 2024 (Comtrade). Titanium is on India's 2023 critical list.