Titanium at 1/10th the cost
A tantalising prospect
Exotic but useful metals such as tantalum and titanium are about to become cheap and plentiful Feb 16th 2013|WATH-UPON-DEARNE  ALUMINIUM was once more costly than gold. Napoleon III, emperor of France, reserved cutlery made from it for his most favoured guests, and the Washington monument, in America’s capital, was capped with it not because the builders were cheapskates but because they wanted to show off. How times change. And in aluminium’s case they changed because, in the late 1880s, Charles Hall and Paul Héroult worked out how to separate the stuff from its oxide using electricity rather than chemical reducing agents. Now, the founders of Metalysis, a small British firm, hope to do much the same with tantalum, titanium and a host of other recherché and expensive metallic elements including neodymium, tungsten and vanadium.This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “A tantalising prospect”From the February 16th 2013 editionDiscover stories from this section and more in the list of contentsExplore the edition