Application of titanium alloy materials in pharmaceutical production industry

The pharmaceutical industry is an important industry related to people's physical and mental health, including pharmaceuticals, medical machinery, sanitary materials and other fields, and occupies an important position in the national economy. Titanium alloy materials are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry because they are non-toxic and harmless, and have good compatibility with the human body. ASTM F136 Titanium Medical Wire     Gr7 Ti-0.2Pd Titanium Wire     Gr2 Pure Titanium Foil     Gr23 Ti-6Al-4V ELI Titanium Tube

In pharmaceutical production, because the production of medicines is inseparable from acids, alkalis and salts, pharmaceutical equipment is easily damaged by corrosion. The use of steel equipment not only cannot solve the problem of serious equipment corrosion, but also causes a lot of loss of human, material and financial resources, affecting normal production. The use of titanium equipment solves this problem very well.

In the production of several main commonly used drugs, the equipment made of titanium has good corrosion resistance and obtains considerable economic benefits.

1. Production of vitamin B1

In my country, the hydrogen chloride conversion method is often used to produce vitamin B1, and the finished product is dried by cyclone and separated by two cyclones. The medium is thiamine hydrochloride, the pH value is 2.5, and the temperature is 110 °C, which is highly corrosive. The original drying device was made of stainless steel, and the inner wall was corroded and perforated after more than a year of use, and seriously polluted the medicine.

After adopting titanium screw feeder, cyclone separator, vortex body, hopper and discharge pipe and titanium lining of exhaust box, the production qualification rate of vitamin B1 has been increased from the highest 95% to 100%, and the equipment has not been corroded for more than 7 years , the cost of titanium can be recovered in 3 months.

2. Vitamin C production

Vitamin C is sorbitol as raw material, fermented into sorbose with black vinegar bacteria, and then fermented with Pseudomonas to obtain low-concentration gulonic acid, which is converted into finished product by hydrogen chloride after concentration.

Titanium is very resistant to corrosion in high temperature coronic acid. In the production process of this product, a titanium tubular heat exchanger, a titanium DHC-500 disc sinking type automatic slag discharge centrifuge, and a TC4 cast impeller are used, and no corrosion has been found for many years.

3. Antibiotic production

The main raw material for the chemical synthesis of chloramphenicol (an antibiotic) is methyl dichloroacetate, which contains about 2% chlorinated alkene and trichloroethylene. If steel equipment is used in the refining process, it is prone to severe corrosion, and titanium is used instead. The equipment has been intact since its manufacture.

How is the super corrosion resistance of titanium alloy made?

Titanium alloys are widely used because of a series of excellent properties. However, titanium alloys have high friction coefficient, are very sensitive to adhesive wear and fretting wear, have poor wear resistance, are easy to ignite under high temperature and high-speed friction, and have relatively poor resistance to high-temperature oxidation. The shortcomings seriously affect the safety and reliability of its structure and greatly limit its application. Therefore, improving the surface properties of titanium alloys such as wear resistance, high-temperature oxidation resistance, and corrosion resistance is an urgent problem to be solved. In addition to improving the composition and preparation process of alloys, surface modification of Seamless Titanium Tube Grade 2 is currently the most effective method.

In recent years, electron beam surface treatment technology has developed rapidly. When the electron beam with high energy density acts on the surface of the material, the surface of the material has physical, chemical, or mechanical properties that are difficult to achieve by conventional methods, and the wear resistance and corrosion resistance of the material surface is significantly improved. and high-temperature oxidation resistance. A domestic engineering technology company used pulsed high-current and low-energy electron beams for surface treatment of grade 5 titanium round rods and achieved good results.

Welding Process and Welding Quality Inspection of Titanium Alloy

In order to avoid common welding defects and at the same time ensure the mechanical properties and corrosion resistance of the weld, when welding titanium and its alloys, a reasonable titanium alloy processing technology must be formulated to ensure the welding quality. At present, the commonly used processes for welding titanium and titanium alloys include argon tungsten arc welding, melting electrode argon arc welding, plasma arc welding, electron beam welding, laser beam welding, brazing, etc.

titanium welding filler wire is a commonly used welding method for welding titanium alloys, mainly used for the welding of titanium and titanium alloys with a thickness of less than 10mm. Manual tungsten argon arc welding has wide adaptability and reliable welding quality, but it has low welding efficiency and high labor intensity for thick plate welding. Melting electrode argon arc welding is more efficient than tungsten electrode argon arc welding and is mainly used for welding thick plates, but the welding process requires higher process parameters and a welding environment, otherwise, it is easy to generate pores. The thickness range of plasma arc welding is relatively wide, and it can be used from thin plates to thick plates, but attention should be paid to the damage to the nozzle during welding. Vacuum electron beam welding is also increasingly used for titanium welding. Because it is in a vacuum environment, it can obtain high-quality welded joints, but at the same time, because it needs to be welded in a vacuum chamber, the size of the workpiece is limited. Compared with the electron beam and plasma beam welding, laser welding has a molten pool purification effect, which can purify the weld metal, and the mechanical properties of the weld are equal to or better than those of the base metal. Brazing can also be used for some micro and precise parts.

Weld quality inspection:

The inspection standards and the specific welding seam inspection standards are strictly implemented in accordance with the drawing requirements and contract requirements.

inspection method:

Appearance inspection and inspection of the surface color of titanium welded joints are the primary control points for the inspection of welded joints. The surface of the welded joint is silver-white and golden-yellow as qualified. Blue, purple, gray and other colors are unqualified, and the surface needs to be treated or repaired.

The appearance quality of welds:

First of all, there should be no welding deformation. The workpiece will generally deform after welding. If the deformation exceeds the allowable value, it will affect the use. Furthermore, it is necessary to control the amount of misalignment and the excess height of the weld, which cannot exceed the tolerance range of the relevant standards. The surface of titanium alloy welds should be free of slag, spatter, cracks, weld bead, incomplete penetration, undercut, excess convex surface (fillet weld), poor forming, misalignment, burn through, arc damage, collapse, porosity, slag inclusion Such defects are visible to the naked eye.

Titanium alloy "space metal", widely used in high-end manufacturing

Titanium has excellent performance and has the reputation of "space metal". Titanium alloy is an important structural material. It is based on titanium and adds other elements such as vanadium, aluminum, molybdenum, and chromium. It is processed by smelting, forging, rolling, extrusion and other processes. It has low density and high specific strength. , The outstanding advantages of high heat resistance and strong corrosion resistance are widely used in high-end fields such as aerospace, petrochemical, national defense and military industry and medical biology.

Titanium Grade 2 Round Rods are widely used in aerospace due to their high corrosion resistance and high specific strength. In terms of hardness, titanium alloy is much harder than the other three alloys, and the tensile strength of titanium alloy is also the highest. Due to the weight factor also needs to be considered in the product structure, the density of zinc alloy is the largest and the specific strength is the smallest, and the specific strength of titanium alloy is higher. At the same time, due to its strong corrosion resistance and heat resistance, titanium alloys are widely used in aircraft engine parts, rocket and missile structural parts.

Titanium processing technology is complex, difficult, and has high technical barriers. The production process of titanium material includes titanium ingot or titanium alloy ingot obtained by melting and casting of sponge ASTM F136 6Al-4V ELI Titanium Bar, and then the company makes titanium material through deformation treatment and machining in forging, rolling and other links according to customer needs and application field requirements, and further. Processed into titanium equipment. The smelting, pressure processing and heat treatment of titanium are relatively difficult, the process is complex, and the technical content is high. Among them, the preparation steps of titanium sponge and titanium materials are more complex and difficult to prepare, which are the key links in the application of titanium. Sponge titanium and titanium The quality of the material directly determines the quality of titanium products.

Domestic casting process: vacuum consumable arc melting (VAR) and cooling bed furnace melting (CHM) in parallel. Due to the high chemical activity of titanium, it will react with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and most refractories in the air in the molten state, so the casting must be carried out in a vacuum or an inert atmosphere. At present, there are two mainstream melting and casting processes in the world: vacuum consumable arc melting (VAR) and cooling bed furnace melting (CHM). The advantage of the VAR method is that the process is mature and the operation is simple. There have been many metallurgical defects such as inclusions and composition segregation in the alloy ingot, which seriously affect the reliability of the material. In recent years, Chinese titanium companies have introduced several electron beam cold hearth melting and casting furnaces and plasma cold hearth melting and casting furnaces from the United States and Germany, and gradually adopt the VAR method and the CHM method in parallel for casting.

Titanium alloys are classified according to their strength and characteristics

Titanium alloys can be divided into low-strength titanium alloys, ordinary-strength titanium alloys, medium-strength titanium alloys, and high-strength titanium alloys according to their different strengths.

1. Low-strength titanium alloys are mainly used for corrosion-resistant titanium alloy sheet, and other titanium alloys are used for structural parts called structure titanium alloys.

2. Ordinary-strength titanium alloys (~500MPa), mainly including industrial pure titanium, TI-2AL-1.5Mn (TCI), and Ti-3AL-2.5V (TA18), are widely used alloys. Due to its good price formation performance and weldability, it is used to manufacture various aerospace sheet parts and hydraulic pipes, as well as civilian products such as bicycles.

3. Medium-strength titanium alloy (~900MPa), the typical alloy is Ti-6Al-4V (TC4), which is widely used in the aerospace industry.

4. High-strength titanium alloy is composed of near-beta titanium alloy pipe and meta-stable beta titanium alloy with a tensile strength at room temperature above 1100MPa. It is mainly used to replace high-strength structural steel commonly used in aircraft structures. Its typical alloys are Ti-13V- 11Cr-3Al, Ti-15V-3Cr-3Sn (TB5) and Ti-10V-2Fe-3Al.