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Light metals have great potential for application in the automotive and aerospace industries because of their excellent physical properties. The usage of aluminium, titanium and magnesium is limited by relatively high costs of production, associated energy costs and large ecological footprint. In the case of aluminium, significant improvement to the Hall–Héroult process is still achievable through advances in cell design, materials and process control. Alternative production processes, including carbothermic reduction and low temperature routes are also possible. Magnesium and titanium production are currently dominated by batch metallothermic processes and new process routes are required to develop these industries. Research at CSIRO, through the Light Metals Flagship, is currently focused on step change improvements in the production of light metals, aiming at lowering energy usage, increasing productivity and reducing the overall environmental impact. In the present paper, the overall status of the existing technologies will be described, highlighting areas that are being developed around the world and at CSIRO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been predicted that new processes being developed for titanium metal production as well as new fabrication techniques will see the cost of fabricated titanium fall by as much as 50%. Potential applications for lower-cost titanium powder are examined in this paper, with cookware being identified as a possible lead product. The potential environmental benefits of using this material in place of competing materials such as stainless steel in chemical process equipment and automotive exhausts are also illustrated, based on a life-cycle approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A dehydrided Ti powder of very high oxygen content was successfully consolidated using back pressure equal channel angular processing into a fully dense bulk ultrafine-grained Ti showing apparent compressive ductility as well as high true yield and ultimate strengths of 1350 and 1780 MPa, respectively. Interstitial solid solution strengthening contributed to the majority of the increase in strength with additional contribution from ultrafine grains. Significantly, the material also exhibited much improved ductility for such a high interstitial content, thanks probably to the nonequilibrium grain boundaries and bimodal grain structure introduced during severe plastic deformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]