Sustainable Supply of Scandium for the EU Industries from Liquid Iron Chloride Based TiO2 Plants

Scandium (Sc) applications in solid oxygen fuel cells, aeronautics and heat exchange systems are forecasted to increase significantly without a sufficient continuous Sc supply for Europe. ScaVanger is an EU project for upscaling Sc extraction and purification technologies from various TiO2 pigment production residues. High purity Sc2O3 and ScF3 will be produced at competitive prices for the EU market. The ScaVanger process is expected to result in a 10% higher production rate and higher product purity as processing starts with a unique cleaning process of actinides. The first plant at a major European TiO2 pigment production site will be supplying about 30 t/a of Sc2O3.

Preparation of black-TiO2 and its application in photocatalytic removal of methyl orange dye

For a few decades, Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) has been the most studied photocatalyst due to its significant optical property. In the paper, TiO2 pigment powder (Anatase form) was selected as a precursor to prepare a variety of Black-TiO2 samples, and the typical material was then evaluated for its photocatalytic activity in organic pollutant treatment. Some properties of Black-TiO2 were determined via common methods such as sensory analysis, X-Ray diffraction, and bandgap measurement obtained from UV-Vis spectroscopy. As a result, the material was successfully converted to more than 40% organic pollutant as Methyl Orange (C14H14N3NaO3S) for an hour, as two times higher than that of the amount converted by pristine TiO2. In addition, Black-TiO2 performed much better photocatalytic activity in an acidic medium in comparison with a neutral one, and the material also remained its activity as more than 90% after three time-continuous recycling operations.