Sustainability and Production Economics of Titanium for Engine Valve: India Perspective

Automotive industry is looking to have breakthrough for utilization of titanium in vehicles with cost effective solution. This is due to the relative cost factor and for titanium it is 20 and 2.9 times greater than steel and aluminium respectively. Looking at Today’s scenario of multi material vehicle, it weighs approximately 221 kg on usage of conventional materials i.e. aluminium 37%, steel 42% and composites 21%. also Indian government has taken bold decision to meet BS VI norms directly by 2020 and to achieve the same it is required to meet NOx level of 0.06 g/km for gasoline vehicles and 0.080 g/km for diesel vehicle along with EGR rates of 35% at full load at which conventional materials like steel, aluminium has to withstand for high temperature cycles and high compressed air pressure at outlet. Hence positive progress of implementation of titanium by proving its production economy and sustainability for leading automotive components like exhaust system, valve train and turbocharger components in vehicles for the mass market is prime important. But focusing on mass market may not work effectively as total production of titanium i.e. ilmenite and rutile is about 522 thousand tonnes by 2016 and on the other hand vehicle production in India by 2016 was 24.015 million units. Considering usage of titanium in other sectors, titanium if contribute up to 2 kg /vehicle (48 thousand tonnes) may leads to proportionate increase in fuel economy, decrease in emission and increased titanium usage in vehicle by 9.2%. To do so automotive engineers, designers need to attack cost, manufacturing challenges and effective research and development on titanium ore extraction technology to make highly priced titanium user friendly for automotive industry. Detail discussion on addressed issues of titanium are discussed in this paper and to prove sustainability of titanium for automotive application metallurgical failure analysis of failed valve (inlet & exhaust) is carried out using spectroscopy, optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy which clearly indicates need of titanium family for high temperature automotive components.