IperionX Limited (ASX:IPX) has completed detailed engineering design for the planned 125-tonnes-per-annum Titanium Demonstration Facility (TDF), and a Techno-Economic Assessment for an expansion into the company’s first Titanium Commercial Facility (TCF-1) of 1,125 tonnes per annum at the Southern Virginia Technology Park in Virginia, USA.
The TDF and TCF-1 will utilize the breakthrough Hydrogen Assisted Metallothermic Reduction technologies to produce titanium metal powder.
Development of the TCF-1 to 1,125 tonnes per annum of production capacity would furnish IperionX with the largest recycled titanium metal powder production capacity globally, and the only titanium production facility using 100 per cent titanium metal scrap as a feedstock.
This would also be the only such facility with zero Scope 1 & 2 emissions with the lowest carbon intensity for any commercial titanium metal powder product.
IperionX Co-founder and Chief Executive Anastasios Arima said: “We have now developed plans for the world’s first and largest recycled titanium powder facility, with initial production from the first stage TDF forecast to come online in early 2024, with a simple and modular expansion to TCF-1 by the end of 2025.
“The pathway for the development of the TDF and TCF-1 build upon the learnings from our current Industrial Pilot Facility operations in Utah where we have been producing circular titanium metal since early 2022.
“The development of the TDF and TCF-1 will scale our production to commercial quantities of 100 per cent recycled titanium metal while also reducing the cost providing the potential for titanium to compete on price with other metals, including stainless steel and aluminum.
The US is a tier 1 fiscal and manufacturing operating environment with a large pipeline of government incentives potentially available to IperionX.
“We look forward to rapidly advancing our developments through 2023 and moving towards scaled up production to secure a U.S. supply chain of this critical metal.”