Tsurprise! Titanium-rich beaches (After the Tsunami)

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Tsurprise! Titanium-rich beaches

sNEW DELHI: Amid all the tragic news coming in the wake of the December 26 tsunami, there's one that should bring some cheer to Indians - the natural phenomenon seems to have left behind millions of tonnes of titanium ore on the beaches of Tamil Nadu.

Considering that known global resources of the ore are in the region of 285 million tonnes and titanium is among the most sought-after metals in the world, you could call that a silver lining.

Titanium is an important metal because of its high strength to weight ratio - it is as strong as steel, but 45 per cent lighter. It's also twice as strong as aluminium, but only 60 per cent heavier. Because of its strength, lightness, extraordinary corrosion resistance, and ability to withstand extreme temperatures, it finds use in the aerospace industry. It is also extensively used for consumer products such as automobiles, computers and mobile phones.

The story behind the discovery of the titanium ores that the tsunami left behind is fascinating. It began not on December 26, but about a year-and-a-half earlier, when the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) set up a networked project involving six of its own institutions and several other academic and industrial institutes to examine the possibility of "placer mining".

A placer deposit consists of some valuable mineral or gemstone that accumulates in weathered rock, stream sediments or in beach deposits as a result of natural weathering and erosion.

A team of scientists led by Dr V J Loveson of the Central Mining Research Institute (CMRI), Dhanbad, who is the coordinating scientist for the project, has been monitoring the level of placer deposits on Tamil Nadu's coastline since then.

By an amazing coincidence, Loveson and his team arrived in Nagapattinam on December 26 for a routine survey. Little did they realise at the time that this survey would be anything but routine.

The team learnt of the tsunami and was on the beaches of Karaikal by 3 pm the same afternoon. Unlike in the past, they had this time a new piece of equipment ?- ground penetrating radar ?- which could scan and analyse the mineral content in the beach sand without having to collect physical samples. And it was being used in India for the first time.

Over the next two days, the team scanned 10-12 km stretches in Karaikal, Nagapattinam, Poombuhar and Velankanni. The depth of the geophysical profiles of the coast varied between 4 and 8 metres and they found incremental deposits of titanium ore varying between 1-3 metres in thickness in most parts.

This part of the coastline ?- from Cuddalore to Vedaranyam ?- already has stations that have been monitoring the data every 15 days over the last 18 months or thereabouts and hence it was easy to work out how much of the deposit was fresh, washed in by the tsunami.

When contacted by TOI, Dr Loveson said it was still too early to project any figure for the overall quantum of fresh deposits though figures like 40 million tonnes have been speculated upon.

That figure is based on back-of-the envelope calculations extrapolating the observed thickness of the deposits to the roughly 500 km of coastline that was hit by the tsnami.

More dependable estimates can be made once all the stations on the coast ?- spaced 5 kms apart ?- have sent in their data, said Dr Loveson.

A lot of these ores, like ilmenite and rutile, are known to exist at a depth of 10-15 metres on the seabed, he said, and the tsunami seems to have dumped it on the beach. The significance of the discovery might have been not very much before the CSIR project began.

India has a little over onesixth of the world's ilmenite reserves but accounts for just 0.0013 per cent (about one in 8000) of global production of the mineral.

This was largely because India had little or no capability in placer mining and the ore is essentially available in coastal placer deposits.

What the CSIR project is trying to do is to make the mining of the ore commercially feasible. There are parts of the world where as ilmenite in concentrations of as little as 3% has proved viable to mine.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/990210.cms

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This is my main business. We call these placers 'lags" because we can lag cut across a waterway and tthe ilmenite , as tiny sand grains, just accumulates. Thee only problem withh the Indian lagss is that they contain a ssignificant amount of hafnium and other radioactive elments in minerals like monazite and hafno-rutile. Cleaning up the rad is a very easy process in the US , or canada where we do most of our work. owever , in India, they will first have to reecognize that theres a dark side to lag ores. Gold and plaatinum placers can be made into lag deposits and collected like chicken eggs.
iInteresting article.
Just so it doesnt sound like a rare and exotic element, the principal product that is made from titanium is wHITE PAINT

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They use it for cookware, too.

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wow, roger betcha that cookware has some pretty colors. Ti, when it gets heated and quenched repeatedly , can get some really neat iridescent colors on the metal.

white paint is, alas, just white paint

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Titanium is very important to the Arms and Ordnance Industries...

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i've got some very nice titanium earrings

non-allergenic and cool colours from having been heated

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sintered Ti and Ta are used for military drop flares a small sinter ball on a parachute can light up a good city block. we have lots of fun finding uses for this stuff'

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India CLEARLY has WMDs. And we now know the Indians worked with Saddam to perpetrate 911. We must proceed immediately to pre-emptively invade that country. The threat is imminent.

And while we're there, we must bring true democracy to the Indian people.

Oh, and Halliburton could harvest some of that excellent titanium, ..... uh ..... for the Indians of course.

Cool

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One of my tennis racquets is called Head Titanium Ti.Heat Comfort Zone Smile

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THE SR 71 BLACKBIRD WAS MADE OF TITANIUM. IT OOZED FUEL UNTIL IT GOT SUPERSONIC AND THE TI FRAME SEALED ITSELF

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Another 'surprise'......

The sea claimed an ancient capital of India. Now it has given it back
Two granite lions placed as guardians of an ancient city proved impotent before the power of the sea. But that same force has brought them to light centuries later. The Boxing Day tsunami has revealed what archaeologists believe to be the lost ruins of an ancient city off Tamil Nadu in Southern India.

The 30-feet waves, which reshaped the Bay of Bengal and swept more than 16,000 Indians to their deaths, shifted thousands of tons of sand to unearth the pair of elaborately carved stone lions near the 7th-century Dravidian Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram. Indian archaeologists believe these granite beasts once guarded a small port city under the Pallava dynasty, which ruled much of southern India from 100BC to AD800. The six-foot high lion statues, each hewn from a single piece of granite, are breathtakingly lifelike. One great stone cat sits up alert while the other is poised to pounce. Two foundation walls also remain visible beneath the murky waters. The tsunami also desilted a large bas-relief stone panel close to the Shore Temple. The half-completed sculpted elephant scoured clean by the waves now attracts mobs of visitors who touch its eroded trunk as a good luck talisman.

Scientists from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) are descending on the World Heritage temple complex of Mahabalipuram, south of Madras, to examine these relics and to launch an underwater survey. They were discovered by a fisherman who survived the disaster when he was catapulted aloft by the tsunami and reportedly clung for hours to the great arch of the Shore Temple. He spotted the undersea structures from this perch and told district authorities. Marine archaeologists have been working with divers from Delhi and a team from the Scientific Exploration Society in Dorset to search for any remnants of this ancient port since April 2002. "The sea has thrown up evidence of the grandeur of the Pallava dynasty," the superintendent ASI archaeologist, T Sathiamoorthy, said last week.

"We're all excited about these finds."

Sailors used to refer to Mahabalipuram as the "Seven Pagodas".

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=610870

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Quote:

Bush Iraq military package boosts titanium makers

Mon Feb 14, 2005 04:17 PM ET
By Steve James
NEW YORK, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Speculation that the U.S. military might soon need more supplies of titanium to armor-plate trucks in Iraq sent stock in producers of the tough, lightweight metal soaring on Monday.

"Any time defense spending is on the rise we ultimately benefit, whether it be through aerospace or land systems," said Richard Leone, a spokesman for RTI International Metals Inc. (RTI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) .

RTI is the biggest North American producer of titanium, and stock in the Niles, Ohio-based company rose as much as 8 percent on Monday. RTI shares ended at $25.43, up $1.58 or 6.6 percent, on the New York Stock Exchange,

"Defense is definitely a big thing for us," Leone said, adding that military sales account for one-third of RTI's business.

Titanium Metals Corp. (TIE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) saw its stock rise 42 cents or 1.5 percent to $29.13.

One Wall Street analyst who declined to be named said investors appeared to be betting that Congress would approve President Bush's $82 billion package to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among other things, the package, being sent to Congress on Monday, is to pay for training Iraqi forces to assume greater responsibility for security and provide an exit strategy for U.S. troops. More specific details were not immediately clear, but armor plating of trucks was believed to be on the list.

The issue won national headlines last October when several members of the Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company disobeyed orders to take their unarmored fuel tankers on a supply run from Tallil in southeastern Iraq to Baghdad. They raised concerns about the safety and the condition of their vehicles and whether the convoy was getting adequate protection.

In December, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld heard from a soldier who asked why military personnel were forced to scavenge for scrap metal to armor-plate their Humvees.

RTI's Leone said the company had provided armor plating for Abrams tanks and the lightweight Howitzer cannon system.

During U.S. military operations in Kosovo in the 1990s, the extreme weight of traditional tanks caused delays in deployment. "They realized weight was an issue, and there has been a big push to lighten them," he said.

Titanium has the same strength and ballistic tolerance of steel but weighs 40 percent to 50 percent less, Leone said.

Another company, Allegheny Technologies Inc. (ATI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , which makes steel and other specialized metals and alloys, including some titanium, said making armor plating was a small part of its business. Its stock slipped 1.3 percent on Monday.

"We could be part of development for retrofitting efforts," spokesman San Greenfield said.

The Pittsburgh-based company usually works through third parties with military contracts, he said. "It's too early to tell, but certain of our products are used by the military," he said.

Source

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Tsurprise! Titanium-rich beaches (After the Tsunami)

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