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Will US Tariffs Threaten Potassium Titanate Supplies?

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the issue of tariffs and the threat of trade wars has loomed large. Much of this has centred around rows with China, Mexico and Canada and has threatened movements of goods ranging from avocadoes to oil.

However, there is also the question of mineral exports and whether issues with these might affect various countries. The EU appears to be next in Mr Trump’s sights, while it is uncertain whether the UK will be hit by tariffs or not. 

Potassium is one of the minerals mined in large quantities in the US, meaning any issues with its cost and supply to other countries could be a significant concern.

Finding an alternative potassium supplier may be problematic for some, as the other leading producers in the world include Russia and Belarus, which would present a problem for any western nations suddenly facing problems with the US.

However, Germany and Canada are also among the leading nations, so the situation is not too bad from any geopolitical perspective. Indeed, it might even be advantageous for Canada if the agreement that has halted the mutual implementation of tariffs between it and the US subsequently breaks down.

Thankfully, the UK is in a secure position for potash, as it has several mines. These include the ICL potash mine at Boulby and Anglo-American’s Woodsmith mine project in North Yorkshire, which when complete will add to Boulby as a producer of a rare combination of potash and other minerals known as polyhalite, often found in the form of orange crystals.

As a result, potassium will not be something the UK is short of in the event of Britain being hit by some kind of trade war involving mineral imports and exports.

Many things in the world of Donald Trump are uncertain, but thanks to what lies beneath the ground in the UK, at least one mineral supply is not in any doubt.

What Was The Original Natural Name For Strontium Titanate?

There are a large number of synthesised minerals, particularly titanites, which are artificially created and do not have a counterpart in nature. The highly advanced nature of chemical analysis and toll processing allows for these compounds to exist.

However, strontium titanate is a particularly unusual example in that for decades it was believed to be a wholly artificial mineral, but decades after it was originally patented in 1953, it was found in nature in 1982.

Its discovery in Siberia was notable for many different reasons. First of all, it was a mineral that is commonplace today as a material in advanced ceramics and up until the synthesis of cubic zirconia was amongst the most popular simulated diamonds in the world, yet was only found as extremely tiny crystals in nature.

Secondly, the fact it took so long was the reverse of so many materials, minerals and compounds in chemical analysis. The standard progression is to find a mineral in nature and discover its mineral structure to explore ways in which it could be synthesised.

This process often takes years, if not decades, and it took until recently for chemically identical lab-grown diamonds to be possible to make at sizes large enough for practical and aesthetic uses.

It was found in Murun Massif, a part of Siberia where several rare minerals were discovered, in a rock formation known as Tausonite Hill, which led to it receiving the name tausonite itself.

The name came from the Soviet geochemist Lev Vladimirovich Tauson (1917 – 1989), the director of the Institute of Geochemistry, based in Irkutsk in the Siberian Division of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

His specialist subject was rare elements found in igneous rocks, which explains in no small part why he was considered to be an appropriate person to name natural strontium titanate after.

It was a largely useless stone in nature, but it helped to prove that some synthetic materials have a basis in the natural world, even if the connection is not always as clear as the shimmering fire of fabulite.

How The Use Of Barium Titanate Detoxifies Feedstock

Barium titanate is one of the most important materials we process and for good reason, as it is highly versatile in carrying out an important range of functions, not least in electronics and electroceramics, as well as its role in non-linear optics.

However, one particularly notable use is the valuable decontamination job it has in the production of hydrocarbon feedstock. This defines any substance that can be refined into hydrogen or other chemicals and includes some very familiar fuel sources such as oil, coal, gas and even water.

The refining processes can include the application of extreme heat, such as in ethylene furnaces, which produce cracked gas products like ethylene and propylene from feedstocks like ethane, propane, butane and kerosene.

However, the process of extracting chemicals from feedstock does have a major downside in that the production of hydrocarbon feedstock itself can require substantial quantities of toxic materials such as nickel and vanadium, for example through the use of nickel-based catalysts.

Unfortunately, this brings a downside as the toxicity of nickel can poison the cracking units used in subsequent processes, with this contamination inhibiting the production of high-value hydrocarbon molecules.

Vanadium has a different negative effect, which involves the deallumination of Y zeolite structures, which causes zeolite crystals to disintegrate, something nickel does not do. Consequently, some of the materials used to help produce feedstocks are as useful to it as square wheels on a car.

Since these effects hamper the production of feedstock and extraction of other materials from it, the addition of barium titanate to reduce the level of contamination can play a key role in making these chemical processes involving feedstocks more effective.

For a substance like barium titanate, which has such an array of uses in electroceramics, electronics and non-linear optics, the fact it is also water-soluble, can exist in multiple forms (although commonly seen as a white powder) and has the invaluable properties of being able to reduce contamination of feedstocks makes it a truly special material.

How Potassium Titanate Can Be Produced From Potash

Potassium titanate is a stable chemical that offers high wear resistance even in very hot conditions. This makes it useful in areas like the automotive industry, welding, electrodes, and coatings.

However, establishing the material, which exists in powder form, is the end point of a process that involves a great deal more than just digging the stuff up from the ground, for potassium titanate is created through a reaction between potassium and titanium dioxide.

This material and its many modern applications may be particularly useful in the 21st century, but the potassium it is extracted from has had its own uses that date back centuries.

Potassium carbonate, also known as potash, is an easily accessible form of the mineral that acted as an alternative to sodium carbonate in the making of glass and bleaching of textiles. Potash was usually obtained from land plants and sodium from sea plants.

The presence of potassium in plants should come as no surprise, as it is present in high quantities in foods like bananas.

Eventually, potassium came to be of greater importance as unlike sodium carbonate, it could be used in making gunpowder. Initially, it could be obtained in large quantities from wood, but this involved major deforestation until the 1860s, when the first mineral deposits were found in Germany.

Later, as two world wars made reliance on Germany impossible, the US and other countries found their own deposits, although the UK did not have its own potash mine until the 1970s, when the Boulby Mine in North Yorkshire began production. At one time this one mine accounted for half the potash in the UK.

While potash continues to be useful as a fertiliser and in soap making, among other purposes, its potassium compounds mean it can find a much more high-tech utility when combined with titanium dioxide.

How Was NASA Involved In The Use Of Potassium Titanate?

Whilst all titanates are widely used in one field or another, one of the most critical when it comes to protecting people’s lives on a daily basis is perhaps potassium titanate.

Due to its extremely high melting point, potassium titanate has become a widely used additive in a variety of situations where friction at high heat levels is essential, and a 1976 technical report published by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States may have contributed to this.

In the mid-1970s, a huge raft of safety regulations were enacted which greatly affected the US car industry, largely spearheaded by the 1965 Ralph Nader book Unsafe at Any Speed as well as an oil crisis that meant the US car industry could no longer sell the inefficient muscle cars characteristic of the industry.

The quickest solution to reach these stringent efficiency and clean air targets was to reduce power and add a much larger protruding bumper to increase safety in the easiest way possible. It was the definition of the path of least resistance, but it was also far from a sustainable option.

There needed to be more effective and sustainable safety solutions that actually helped to solve the problems noted in Unsafe at Any Speed and increasingly fixed in other countries.

The long bumpers were replaced by the now-industry standard deformable bumper and crumple zone, more efficient diesel engines were made to increase fuel economy and eventually reduce emissions through fuel injection and better-designed carburettors, and there were improvements to both handling and braking.

The latter, in particular, was aided by a move away from traditional drum brakes to brake disks, which used ceramic brake pads made with potassium titanate as an additive.

The advantage of this is that they lasted longer and were more effective at high temperatures, something confirmed in a report sponsored by NASA, reducing the problem of brake fade and dramatically improving safety as a result.

What Role Can Potassium Titanate Play In Battery Advances?

Potassium titanate is an important compound for use in various chemical processes, such as in capacitors and friction materials like brake pads. But in the future, it may have another role to play in motoring.

As Material Properties has noted, the compound could have a major role to play in the future in battery technology development. It said: “One promising area is its use in next-generation batteries, where it could potentially improve energy density and longevity.”

This area is not just theoretical or a case of a new application searching for a use. This is an age when electric vehicles are proliferating and there is a growing need to store more electricity when renewables cannot produce it all the time – the answer to the question of what happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

The need for batteries to be able to last longer and store more energy is an imperative for the electric vehicle sector, as it will make the charging process more efficient and also reduce concerns about ‘range anxiety’ – the notion that a vehicle travelling to a more remote area might get stranded out of reach of a charger.

Progress is already being made in this area with other materials. For example, Lithium-sulphur batteries may now offer the prospect of better storage capacity and longevity than other renewable batteries after engineers at Southern Methodist University in the US found a way to prevent polysulfide dissolution from occurring during their use.

Polysulfide dissolution reduces the lifespan of such batteries, but a new polymer created by researchers enables these batteries to be used without this happening.

While this may advance the cause for lithium-sulphur batteries, work is taking place on various other substances to seek to overcome constraints on capacity.

In such an active industry aiming at the critical goal of decarbonising the motor industry, there are many materials that could have a role to play. Potassium titanate is very much among them.

Did Barium Titanate Begin A Golden Age of Ferroelectricity?

Of the many titanate compounds available and widely used in industrial practices, barium titanate might possibly be the one that changed entire industries the most through the widespread development of a critical type of insulator.

The concept of ferroelectricity was not invented with the discovery of barium titanate, with the concept first discovered by Elie Seignette in the 17th century. The term comes from its similarity to ferromagnetism, not because any ferroelectric materials actually contain iron.

The first ferroelectric, Rochelle salt, deforms when an electric field is applied to them, a property that was only discovered in 1921, although given the structure of the material it remained to be seen if it could be usefully applied.

That question was comprehensively answered in 1945 with the discovery of barium titanate’s ferroelectric properties, making it the first ferroelectric material that did not have any hydrogen bonds in its structure.

This was important as it allowed it to be far more widely used as a capacitor and have multiple phases of ferroelectricity. This made it hugely important for military and industrial applications, and the hunt for other similar materials would only bring this even further forward.

The following decade and beyond, from 1945 until the early 1960s led to the discovery of 100 ferroelectric materials as well as a wide range of discoveries surrounding industrial applications for ferroelectricity as a concept.

This was known as the Golden Age of Ferroelectricity and proved to be one of the most fertile grounds for the early application and evolution of titanates with a footprint and consequences that we still see today in various electronic industries.

It also allowed for the development of a widespread electronic industry and the beginnings of miniaturisation. 

Before the ability to use barium titanate as a capacitor, the main insulating materials used in electrical experiments were paper and mica, a silicate primarily found in paints and drywall material.

Barium titanate changed that by being both better suited for the task and also more widely available.

Did Strontium Titanate Truly Shine Brighter Than A Diamond?

During the 1950s, a lot of titanates were developed, but strontium titanate has a particularly interesting history even by these standards.

Known as tausonite after the Russian geochemist Lev Tauson, strontium titanate might be amongst the most famous and well-known of all titanate, in no small part because it was one of the first and most fascinating diamond simulants on the market.

Its properties were similar in some respects, and when cut and polished like a natural diamond, it actually shone brighter than the natural precious stone it was compared to.

They had similar lustre, scintillation and brilliance, but tausonite had a much brighter fire, which is the prismatic effect that occurs when light passes through it.

The striking rainbow effect it caused made it immediately popular in the jewellery trade, particularly given it was far cheaper than natural diamonds during a decades-long period of price fixing by one of the biggest diamond producers in the world.

It was given a lot of different names, although the most famous one that retained momentum in the marketplace was “Fabulite”. However, “Marvelite”, “Dynagem” and “Diagem” were also used at various points.

The beautiful fire kept it popular for decades, even amidst concerns that its much lower hardness compared to natural precious stones meant that keys and loose change could cause scratches.

However, this did eventually lead manufacturers to hunt for alternatives, which eventually led to the rise of yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG), gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG) and cubic zirconia, the latter of which became as famous a name as tausonite in diamond simulant circles.

Eventually, the synthesis of moissanite replaced almost every other simulated diamond on the market, but despite this, the sheer brightness of the stone has meant that it has managed to remain popular for costume jewellery pieces that will not be scratched or bumped, such as brooches and earrings.

Researchers Announce Potassium Battery Breakthrough

The development of renewable energy and electric vehicles has necessitated advancements way beyond the levels of battery technology people have been able to rely on up until now, whether it is the lithium batteries used in electric vehicles, or new developments that enhance the capacity of materials previously thought to have limited benefits.

In the latter case, this has often involved innovations to take familiar materials and break down barriers to greater storage capacity, something a battery technology firm has now claimed with potassium.

Group1 announced its new development at the Beyond Lithium conference in Austin, Texas, with the world’s first potassium-ion battery taking the cylindrical 18650 form factor.

While the 18650 form factor is the most widely used cell factor, what is new is the way the firm has managed to create Kristonite, a 4v cathode material developed from Prussian white potassium by Group1, which offers high energy storage without having to incorporate some rare or highly toxic minerals associated with lithium, like cobalt and nickel.

The firm states that it is a better option than either lithium-ion or sodium-ion batteries, which if proven will mean increased demand for refined potassium titanates.

“This innovation represents years of dedicated research and product development. By distributing samples to our partners among Tier 1 OEMs and cell manufacturers,“ said Group1 CEO Alexander Girau, adding that the firm is “paving the way for widespread adoption of this transformative technology”.

Potassium certainly isn’t the only material to be the subject of a new technology breakthrough announcement in recent years; in 2022, researchers in Finland said they had found a way to create a fully-effective sand battery for the first time, which could store heat for months on end.

However, as that was a 100-tonne device, it may be beneficial for heating homes and offices, but not for cars or mobile devices. Therefore, the potassium innovation could yet provide the most significant and viable alternative to lithium to emerge for many years.

How Does Potassium Titanate Save Lives Every Single Day?

Titanates, even by the standard of other industrial materials, are fascinating for the unique properties they have and what they are capable of facilitating. However, potassium titanate somehow manages to take this a step further.

Whilst strontium titanate is a beautiful diamond substitute invented before it was naturally discovered and barium titanate became a common material in crystal microphones, potassium titanate helps to save lives in one of the most dangerous environments we experience every day.

Unless you live in a rural area, everyone from drivers and passengers to pedestrians interact with roads, and given how quickly cars travel along them, it is not surprising that they can be one of the most dangerous environments people interact with on a regular basis.

One of the most important tools to help reduce this danger is the brake pad, a pair of pads made from a material designed to generate friction when pressed against a spinning brake disk, which helps to slow down and stop a vehicle.

The brake pad is used every single time someone drives a vehicle, often on multiple occasions, to the point that many people do not appreciate just how important it is.

There are a lot of different materials that can be used to make brake pads, but one potential technology that has seen increased interest is granular potassium titanate, which has promising frictional qualities and could potentially boost braking performance.

This is not entirely a new discovery, with the first patent for making brake pads using potassium titanate published in China in 2010.

The patent description highlights the huge advantage of using the material, as it absorbs heat energy and provides a high level of friction, both qualities essential in effective braking.

Brakes that are too hot are less effective, and less friction means less braking force, so a titanate is helping in a very real way to save lives.