Abstract:In view of the problems of low efficiency and difficulty in metal/molten salt separation for titanium scrap deoxidation, in this study, a new method was proposed to effectively reduce the dissolved oxygen in titanium scrap by using Mg as deoxidant in MgCl2?YCl3 flux through the generation of YOCl. To reduce oxygen content in Ti to less than 1000 mass ppm O by using magnesium (Mg) as a deoxidant at 1200 K, the activity of the deoxidation product MgO, in the system must be reduced to less than 0.05 from a thermodynamic study result. The theoretical deoxidation limit at Mg/MgCl2/YOCl/YCl3 equilibrium was 16 ppm O, through thermodynamic calculation using a logpO2-logpCl2 diagram. Based on theoretical research, the titanium deoxidization experiment with Mg as deoxidizer was carried out in the MgCl2?YCl3 molten salt system. The results confirmed that the oxygen content in Ti is reduced to less than 1000 ppm, because the activity of the deoxidized byproduct MgO is reduced to a lower level through the generation of YOCl, which promoted the deep deoxidization of magnesium. In addition, the oxygen content in Ti decreases gradually with the increasing activity of YCl3, which the oxygen content can be reduced to about 600 ppm with the activity of YCl3 is 0.9.