The titanium market is assessing the fallout of a chlorine gas leak at Kazakh titanium sponge producer Ust-Kamenogorsk Titanium and Magnesium Plant (UKTMP) on 19 May, with the company anticipating no significant impact to production but other sources cautioning the possibility of outages during repairs.
"An industrial incident occurred during a scheduled preventive cleaning of equipment at one of the production sites, as a result of a short-term deviation in the operation of the gas exhaust system," UKTMP told Argus.
The leak occurred during maintenance to repair blocked pipes on one of the plant's chlorinators. One of the emitted gases was chlorine, which is used in the Kroll process to convert titanium dioxide into titanium tetrachloride. Titanium tetrachloride is subsequently reduced with magnesium to produce titanium sponge.
Additional cleaning was promptly carried out and UKTMP switched to a reserve chlorinator per standard procedure, it told Argus. But one market source questioned the condition of UKTMP's reserve equipment, owing to a lack of investment in recent years.
"The incident did not affect the production process as a whole, especially the production of titanium sponge. Today, the plant is operating normally, without any change to the production schedule," UKTMP said.
Mixed or limited information received by market participants has led to varied reactions.
Some sources have claimed that the situation is more critical than UKTMP has said, underpinned in part by videos released online of green chlorine gas over Ust-Kamenogorsk in eastern Kazakhstan, although Argus could not verify these videos. It could take more than six months to repair damaged equipment, during which time sponge production will be affected, some sources claimed, but UKTMP denied such an outage.
US titanium producer ATI confirmed to Argus that its supply of titanium sponge is secure, but ATI could not provide insight on UKTMP's operations.
France's Aubert & Duval — a consumer of aerospace-grade 6Al 4V ingot, and titanium sponge through its EcoTitanium subsidiary — declined to comment.
One Atlantic alloy producer that Argus understands procures 6Al 4V ingot from UKTMP said it does not see any risk to grade 5 ingot supply as a result of the leak.
UKTMP produced 19,000t of titanium sponge last year, according to the company, accounting for 21pc of aerospace-approved sponge supply, or 16pc, including Russia.
