Modified organic reagent for deeply purifying crude TiCl4: an in-depth study on key component and mechanism

Organic reagent is considered as one of the most promising reductants for deeply removing vanadium (V) trichloride oxide (VOCl 3 ) from crude titanium tetrachloride (TiCl 4 ). Nevertheless, indeterminate active component and unclearly removal mechanisms appear to be the obstacles to separate VOCl 3 from TiCl 4 using organic reagent. Herein we conduct the experiment to explore it. Firstly, the organic reagents are obtained from enterprise (noted as EOR 1 –EOR 7 ), and then it is determined that carbon aromatic (C A ) is the active component for removing VOCl 3 . Furthermore, modified organic reagents (noted as MOR 1 –MOR 4 ) are prepared via adding aromatic hydrocarbon oil and stearic acid to EOR 7 , then indicating that MOR 3 is endowed with the best capacity to remove VOCl 3 . In addition, the residues obtained from distillation experiment are comprehensively analyzed (using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) etc.), revealing that porous amorphous carbon that deriving from MOR, plays an excellent role in removing VOCl 3 from TiCl 4 system. Therefore, the removal mechanisms can be explained like that porous amorphous carbon reduces VOCl 3 into insoluble vanadium (III) chloride (VCl 3 ) and vanadium (IV) oxide dichloride (VOCl 2 ), and then they are separated via adsorption process, with the help of porous amorphous carbon.