Van Arkel-de-Boer process

The iodide or van Arkel-de Boer process is a volatilization process involving transfer of an involatile metal as its volatile compound. It is used for the purification of titanium. The reaction of iodine gas with impure titanium metal at 175°C yields gaseous titanium iodide and leaves the impurities in the sohd residue. 

Zirconium tetraiodide is the least thermally stable zirconium tetrahaUde. At 1400°C, it disproportionates to Zr metal and iodine vapor. This behavior is utilized in the van Arkel-de Boer process to refine zirconium. As with the tetrachloride and tetrabromide, the tetraiodide forms additional adducts with gaseous ammonia which, upon heating, decompose through several steps ending with zirconium nitride. 

Zirconium, too, is produced commercially by the Kroll process, but the van Arkel-de Boer process is also useful when it is especially important to remove all oxygen and nitrogen. In this latter method the crude zirconium is heated in an evacuated vessel with a little iodine, to a temperature of about 200° C when Zrl4 volatilizes. A tungsten or zirconium filament is simultaneously electrically heated to about 1300°C. This decomposes the Zrl4 and pure zirconium is deposited on the filament. As the deposit grows the current is steadily increased so as to maintain the temperatures. The method is applicable to many metals by judicious adjustment of the temperatures. Zirconium has a high corrosion resistance and in certain chemical plants is preferred to alternatives such as stainless... 

The light actinide metals (Th, Pa, and U) have extremely low vapor pressures. Their preparation via the vapor phase of the metal requires temperatures as high as 2375 K for U and 2775 K for Th and Pa. Therefore, uranium is more commonly prepared by calciothermic reduction of the tetrafluoride or dioxide (Section II,A). Thorium and protactinium metals on the gram scale can be prepared and refined by the van Arkel-De Boer process, which is described next. 

The van Arkel-De Boer process is widely used to refine metals. A transporting agent such as Ij reacts with the metal (M) to be refined to form a volatile iodide. This iodide is then decomposed at a higher temperature into the refined metal and I2, which becomes available again to react with the impure metal, thus sustaining the process ... 

For successful use of the van Arkel-De Boer process starting with an actinide compound, it is necessary that the original actinide compound react readily with Ij to yield a volatile actinide iodide. Both ThC and PaC, easily prepared from the corresponding metal oxides by car-boreduction (Section II,C), react with I2 at 625 K to yield volatile iodides and carbon. Above 1475 K these iodides are unstable and decompose into the respective metals and iodine. 

Proceeding from thorium to plutonium along the actinide series, the vapor pressure of the corresponding iodides decreases and the thermal stability of the iodides increases. The melting point of U metal is below 1475 K and for Np and Pu metals it is below 975 K. The thermal stabilities of the iodides of U, Np, and Pu below the melting points of the respective metals are too great to permit the preparation of these metals by the van Arkel-De Boer process. 

The efficiency of the van Arkel-De Boer process (Section II,D) for refining thorium and protactinium metals can be increased by repeating the process to achieve higher purity of product metal. 

Protactinium metal was first prepared in 1934 by thermal decomposition of a pentahalide on a hot filament 50). It has since been prepared from PaF4 by metallothermic reduction (Section II,A) with barium 26, 27, 34,102), lithium 40), and calcium 73, 74). However, the highest purity metal is achieved using the iodide transport (van Arkel-De Boer) process (Section II,D). 

The method of choice for the preparation of Pa metal is a somewhat modified van Arkel-De Boer process, which uses protactinium carbide (Section II,C) as the starting material. The carbide and iodine are heated to form protactinium iodide, which is thermally dissociated on a hot filament 12-15). An elegant variation is to replace the filament with an inductively heated W or Pa sphere 109). A photograph of a 1.4-g sample of Pa metal deposited on a radiofrequency-heated W sphere is shown in Fig. 6. From the analytical data presented in Table V, the impurities present before and after application of this modified iodide transport process (Sections II,D and III,C) can be compared. 

A general method for preparation of all An metals is by reduction of AnF3 or AnF4 with vapors of Li, Mg, Ca, or Ba at 1100 to 1400°C the chlorides or oxides are sometimes used. There are some special methods such as the preparation of Th or Pa from their tetraiodides by the van Arkel-de Boer process, or the following reaction for the relatively volatile americium ... 

Iodide compounds are not very stable, so heating them can result in an easy recapture of the metal elements in the compound. For example, the van Arkel-de-Boer process (or crystal bar process) is used to purify zirconium. This is done by passing the heated gas (Zrl ) over a white hot tungsten filament, and over time the metals form on the tungsten. 

For zirconium production, the Van Arkel-de Boer process [1] and the Kroll process [2] are the two main processes applied in the industry. The Van Arkel-de Boer process is also known as the iodide process or the crystal bar process, developed by the Dutch chemists Van Arkel and De Boer in 1925 [1]. It is the first industrial process for the commercial production of pure ductile metallic zirconium, and is still in use for the production of small quantities of ultra-pure titanium and zirconium. The Van Arkel-de Boer process involves the use of elemental iodine and crude metal, in the form of a sponge or alloy scrap, to form a volatile metal iodide at a low temperature. At a high temperature, the metal iodide will thermally decompose into pure metal and gaseous iodine. The Kroll process is a process used to produce titanium metal [2], developed in 1945 by... 

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