Investigations on the effect of certain carbonyl compounds on the removal of iron during the rusting of reduced ilmenite

The removal of iron oxide from reduced ilmenite through rusting route to yi eld synthetic rutile with more than 90% TiO2 is more environment friendly. Carbothermically reduced ilmenite containing metallic iron is subjected to catalytic aeration to remove iron as iron oxide. The catalytic oxidation st ep being the slowest in the process requires improvement in order to increa se the efficiency. Attempts were made to accelerate this reaction by the ad dition of few compounds such as pyrogallol, anthraquinone 2. Sulphonic acid , saccharin, starch and formaldehyde to NH,CI during rusting. It was observ ed that starch, formaldehyde and saccharin have a positive effect on the re action. Various factors affecting the reaction as well as the kinetics have been investigated. The activation energies have been calculated.