Skull melting plant - a "stand-alone" facility for melting of titanium and zirconium

The reactive metals group includes titanium and zirconium, which both have strategic application fields due to their peculiar capabilities (light weight vs. high temperature mechanical properties, very low corrosion susceptibility, high biological compatibility, low neutron scattering) in spite to the high production price. Their application fields range in aerospace structures, high temperature or aggressive chemical environments, electrical power plants, nuclear power plants, chemical and food industry, architectural, medical/biological applications, extreme and technological sport applications, luxury goods. This paper deals with one melting technology for reactive metals (named "Skull Melting" - SKM) which is completely developed and already implemented in a number of working plants able to demonstrate their safe and profitable capabilities. In the following it will be generally referred to the titanium (CP and its alloys) melting, but each SKM furnace is able to melt zirconium as well and this capability has been already applied to production. SKM process is also suitable for vacuum melting of steel special and super-alloys starting from selected scrap.