The United States imported more than 90% of the 1.4 million metric tons of titanium minerals it consumed during 2019. What the mass majority of this critical mineral was used for, however, may come as a surprise.

While titanium's lightweight and extreme durability make it an excellent material for aircraft and high-performance sporting equipment, more than 90% of this mineral mined each year is used to impart a stark whiteness to a surprisingly wide variety of consumer goods we use every day.

"Titanium is different than most other metallic elements in that it is mined primarily to satisfy demands for a chemical product – titanium dioxide for pigment – rather than for the metal itself," the U.S. Geological Survey penned in a 2017 report on the durable mineral.

Unlike many of the other 35 minerals and metals considered critical to the United States, no appreciable amounts of titanium have been mined in Alaska. There are, however, several places across the Far North state to look for this essential household and aerospace metal.

Whiter whites

Titanium dioxide has three qualities that make it an ideal material for creating whiter whites – it is white, it is safe for human consumption, and it scatters light extremely well.

"Titanium dioxide has properties of whiteness, opacity, and chemical inertness that make it especially suitable for use as pigment to impart a durable white color to paints, paper, plastic, sunscreen, toothpaste, and wallboard," the USGS inked in its titanium report.

Most high-quality white paints you buy in the hardware store today contain "titanium white" a pigment made from this highly reflective, white material.

In addition to imparting a reflectiveness and whiteness that makes rooms appear brighter, titanium dioxide increases paint's opacity, which assists in the "one-coat cover" touted by many paint manufacturers.

And titanium dioxide is even used to make foods such as skim milk and cottage cheese whiter and creamier looking.

There are very few replacements for titanium dioxide when it comes to pigments. Lead, which was the ingredient of choice for white paint for nearly 2,000 years, has similar whitening qualities but is seldom used in paints today because of its toxicity.

According to the USGS, roughly 59% of the titanium dioxide used in the United States last year went into paints; 20% into plastics; 5% into paper; and 16% into cosmetics, foods, and other products.

Because it is used in such a wide variety of products, most U.S. consumers use a product containing titanium dioxide every day.

Lighter, stronger metal

While we typically don't think about titanium dioxide in our toothpaste or milk, many of us are much more familiar with the exceptional weight-to-strength ratio that titanium metal lends to high-performance sporting gear such as bicycle frames, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and goalie masks.

Medical implants, such as hip and knee replacements, also take advantage of titanium metal's lightweight durability, along with an inertness that allows the mineral to be added to milk.

The aerospace industry, however, is by far the largest consumer of titanium metal.

"In the 1950s, the titanium metal industry was established primarily in response to the emerging aerospace industry, which used it in the manufacture of airframe structural components and skin, aircraft hydraulic systems, air engine components, rockets, missiles, and spacecraft," according to ASM Aerospace Specification Metals Inc.

When it comes to aircraft performance, the lighter the better.

While aluminum is about 60% lighter than titanium, it is only about half as strong, corrodes much easier and does not hold up to heat as well. Since it is important not to break- or melt-down at 20,000 feet, titanium is the metal of choice for many aircraft parts.

"Titanium metal's combination of corrosion resistance, excellent weight-to-strength ratio, and very high melting point is not found with other metals," the USGS penned in its titanium report.

For these reasons, the geological survey said there are no completely satisfactory substitutes for titanium when it comes to many aerospace applications.

In addition to being lightweight and strong on its own, titanium alloys with aluminum, iron, nickel, molybdenum, vanadium, and other metals – which makes it ideal for a wide array of aircraft parts and military equipment.

The airframes, landing gear and fasteners used in many commercial and military aircraft today are made from titanium or a titanium alloy.

The ability to withstand temperatures from subzero to above 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit, also makes titanium an increasingly useful metal for jet engine parts.

According to the USGS, an estimated 80% of titanium metal consumed in the U.S. during 2019 was used in aerospace applications; the balance was used in armor, chemical processing, marine hardware, medical implants, power generation, and other applications.

Widely dispersed

While titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust, for the most part it is too widely dispersed to be economically mined. There are a few titanium minerals, however, that contain higher concentrations of this element. About 90% of the world's titanium is found in one such mineral, ilmenite, made up of iron and titanium oxide.

Roughly 100,000 metric tons of titanium mineral concentrates were produced in the United States during 2019. This production came from mining and tailings in Florida and Georgia.

The remaining 1.3 million metric tons of titanium mineral concentrates used to make titanium dioxide pigment, welding rod coatings, and titanium metal in the U.S. last year was imported from overseas sources.

South Africa (36%), Australia (26%), Canada (11%) and Mozambique (10%) were America's principle suppliers of titanium concentrates.

This heavy reliance on imports, coupled with the broad applications – from skim milk to stealth fighters – are the reasons titanium ranks among the 35 minerals the USGS currently considers critical to the economy and security of the United States.

The sparse quantities of titanium mined in the United States, however, belies the amount of resource found here.

Rich deposits of this critical mineral are found along the East Coast of the United States, a region known as the eastern North America titanium province. The deposits in this province extend from New York to the Gulf of Mexico, with the bulk of the resource in this highly populated region found in heavy-mineral concentrations in beach, bar, dune, and stream sands along the Atlantic and Gulf.

In total, about 111.9 million metric tons of titanium dioxide has been identified in 20 U.S. states.

Gulf of Alaska beach sands

Alaska is not among the 20 states that report a titanium resource but that could soon change. This is because Alaska Metal Health Trust, which was granted 1 million acres of land to earn money to provide mental health care in the state, is exploring titanium enriched beach sands along the Gulf of Alaska coast.

Located about 75 miles northwest of Yakutat, this potential resource being studied by the Alaska Mental Health Trust Lands Office is known as the Icy Cape Gold and Industrial Heavy Minerals project.

The mineral-rich beach sands found at Icy Cape were first discovered in 1899. At the time, though, the main interest was gold. Up until World War II, small hand operations along this stretch of beach, previously known as the Yakataga district, produced around 15,000 ounces of gold.

The iron and titanium oxide potential of these beach sands were first sampled by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1962.

The best of these samples contained 7.3 pounds of titanium per ton. Most, however, were less than two lb/t titanium.

In 1995, the Bureau of Mines revisited the beach sands. This work found the Yakataga beach sands contained ilmenite and rutile, both titanium minerals; and zircon, another mineral considered critical to the United States.

"Samples from Cape Yakataga contain an average of 0.57% valuable heavy minerals (0.49% ilmenite; 0.05% rutile; 0.03% zircon), with a range of less than 0.1 to 2.9% in 68-120 million metric tons of sand," Jeff Foley inked in a 1995 Bureau of Mines report.

The Bureau of Mines team led by Foley estimated that less thoroughly sampled stretches of beach in the Cape Yakataga area contain roughly another 128 million metric tons of titanium enriched beach sands.

Since 2015, the Alaska Mental Health Trust has been systematically exploring this roughly 30-mile-long stretch of beach on the property now called Icy Cape. These programs have included high-resolution aeromagnetic geophysical surveys and drilling.

While a report detailing the results from this work has yet to be published, the Mental Health Trust Lands Office has reported the mineral sands being investigated include garnets and platinum, in addition to the titanium, zircon and gold previously reported. This could provide an economically interesting mix of metals and minerals, three of which are on the current list of 35 minerals the USGS deemed critical to the United States.

In addition to investigating the heavy mineral sands on the now Icy Bay property, the Bureau of Mines also sampled the beaches in the immediate area of the town of Yakutat, which is 75 miles to the southeast.

After extensive sampling in 1962 and 1995, the Bureau of Mines calculated that a 14-mile stretch of beach at Yakutat hosts 57 million metric tons of sand averaging 3.4% ilmenite, zircon, and rutile. This investigation also recognized the gold and platinum metals found in these beach sands but did not do enough analysis on these metals to estimate the concentration.

The federal mining bureau also investigated the Mount Fairweather area, another stretch of beach just southeast of Yakutat. Samples collected from here averaged 2.43% ilmenite, 0.01% rutile and 0.05% zircon.

In total, the Bureau of Mines calculated that Icy Bay, Yakutat and Mount Fairweather host 450 million to 500 million metric tons of sand in modern shoreline deposits containing 0.5 to 3% valuable heavy minerals. This estimate does not include the value of the garnets, platinum group metals or gold also found in the beach sands.

Bering offshore

There may also be mineable concentrations of titanium, along with zirconium and rare earths, just off the coast of the Seward Peninsula in far western Alaska.

Since the Nome Gold Rush drew thousands to the gold-rich beaches of Nome 120 years ago, the Seward Peninsula has been famed for its gold-rich marine deposits that extend offshore. A 2016 report by the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys outline the potential of critical minerals enriched marine placers about 100 miles northwest of Nome at the western tip of the Seward Peninsula.

"We conclude that sedimentary processes in the Bering Strait are present that could create heavy-mineral placers containing minerals with titanium, zirconium, and rare earth elements plus minor tin, tungsten, niobium, and precious metals," DGGS penned in its report.

Considering that the western end of Seward Peninsula hosts some of the richest critical mineral occurrences in Alaska – Kougarok, Lost River and Potato Mountain to name a few – it is no wonder that the marine sands and gravels also have intriguing concentrations of these elements. There is also a very strong northward ocean currents passing through the Bering Strait, which has likely created concentrations of the heavy mineral sands on the shallow ocean floor just off the coast.

Geologist James Barker, who explored much of Alaska for its critical and strategic mineral potential while working for the U.S. Bureau of Mines, investigated the potential of the heavy mineral marine placers at the tip of the Seward Peninsula in the 1980s. With interest in critical minerals on the rise, Barker's work was revisited and published in the 2016 report "Heavy Mineral Concentration in a Marine Sediment Transport Conduit, Bering Strait, Alaska".

While Barker's work has identified intriguing quantities of titanium and other metals, further investigations of this critical minerals rich area of Alaska, both on the land and under the ocean, is needed.

"For instance, titanium resource potential is highly dependent on mineralogical characteristics of the ilmenite present at Cape Prince of Wales," Barker wrote.

Humble titanium discovery

Beaches are not the only place you can find titanium in Alaska. Kemuk, a prospect in Southwest Alaska hosts what could be an enormous lode of this critical metal.

Humble Oil Company originally investigated this property for its iron potential, after identifying an extremely strong magnetic signature over a four-square-mile area there. This anomaly identified a large mafic and ultramafic – igneous rocks rich in magnesium and iron – body buried about 25 to 40 meters below the surface.

Humble drilled 16 holes into this iron- and titanium-rich body, some going as deep as 600 meters.

Based on this initial work, it was estimated that Kemuk hosts 2.4 billion tons of material averaging 15 to 17% iron, along with titanium and silicon.

This project was revisited by Millrock Resources Inc. in 2010. The company, however, was less interested in the titanium and iron than the potentially even larger porphyry copper-deposit might represent.

Core from Humble's 1950s drilling – now stored at the Alaska Geological Materials Center in Anchorage – provided Millrock geologists with a peek at what lies below the surface at Kemuk.

The Millrock team postulated that Kemuk could be analogous to a similar igneous body lying next to the enormous Pebble porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum project about 100 miles to the east.

While it remains unclear whether a porphyry copper-gold deposit on the scale of Pebble is hidden near Kemuk, the large body of iron-titanium mineralization already identified there is an indication of Alaska's latent potential to be a domestic source of titanium and other metals and minerals critical to the U.S.

Pixabay

More than 90% of this mineral mined each year is used to impart a stark whiteness to paints and a surprising array of other consumer products.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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