Titanium Scrap Specification — Commercially Pure Grades, 6Al-4V and Mixed Alloy Arisings

Titanium reaches the scrap market from aerospace and medical manufacturing, chemical process plant, marine and offshore hardware, and from the machining shops that work titanium bar, plate and forgings. Because titanium is expensive to produce from ore, the recycling chain is unusually attentive to cleanliness and identification: the intended destination of a clean, single-grade parcel is quite different from that of a mixed, contaminated one.

Two distinctions run through the whole stream. The first is commercially pure titanium against alloyed titanium. The second is solids against turnings — turnings carry cutting fluid, fines and a fire-safety profile that solids do not, and they are handled and packed as a separate material.

Chemistry is grade-dependent. This page does not state a guaranteed composition: alloy family, element ranges and any deleterious-element limits must be confirmed for the specific lot by material identification, XRF or OES analysis, mill certificates where available, or an agreed inspection before shipment.

Material is offered in one or more of the presentations below; where a lot spans several of them, each form is packed and described as its own fraction.

Trade discussion normally proceeds at family level, with grade confirmation where the parties require it.

Titanium is easy to identify as titanium and hard to grade by eye. It is non-magnetic, distinctly light for its strength — roughly half the weight of a steel part of the same size — and gives a characteristic bright white spark shower with intense sparkling on a grinding wheel. Those checks separate titanium from stainless and aluminium reliably enough for yard work.

Distinguishing commercially pure titanium from 6Al-4V is instrument work. XRF reads aluminium and vanadium well enough to place a piece in a family on a clean surface. What XRF cannot do is measure the interstitial elements — oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and carbon — that determine whether a grade meets a melt specification, and it does not read carbon in any useful way.

That limitation is the practical reason clean, identified, single-grade material is treated so differently from mixed collections: the buyer's route for the former depends on assumptions that only documentation and controlled melt analysis can support.

The exclusions on titanium are stricter than on most streams because a small amount of the wrong material can compromise a melt.

Titanium turnings are a fire-risk material. Fine, dry chips can ignite and, once burning, are not extinguished by water. Handling and packing follow from that: turnings are kept in closed metal containers, kept away from ignition sources during collection and packing, and are not compacted or bundled in ways that create hot spots. The applicable transport rules are determined by the actual condition of the material, the mode of transport and the carrier, and are confirmed for each shipment.

Solids present no comparable hazard and are packed conventionally, but they still need to be kept apart from the turnings fraction so that a clean solid parcel is not diluted by a residue-bearing one.

A workable enquiry states the alloy family or grade and its basis, the split between solids and turnings, the origin process, whether the material is aerospace-documented or general arisings, contamination and surface condition, packing available at the loading point, and the destination port.

Where a buyer needs assured chemistry — including interstitial limits — that requirement must be written into the contract with a sampling and melt-analysis procedure attached. Handheld screening cannot satisfy it and is never offered as though it can.

Screening establishes family: is this commercially pure titanium or an aluminium-vanadium alloy, and is there foreign metal in the parcel. It is done on a prepared surface, on a sample of pieces spread across the lot, and it is used to sort before packing.

It does not establish grade compliance. Interstitial content, which is what separates one commercially pure grade from another and governs acceptance in most melt applications, is a laboratory determination. Where a buyer's route depends on it, the analysis method and the sampling plan are agreed in the contract before shipment.

Customs classification for titanium-bearing secondary material depends on the actual composition and physical form of the goods, on whether the material is solid scrap, turnings, powder or residue, on the destination country and on how the competent authority in that jurisdiction interprets the material description.

Mixed-grade and mixed-family lots can create additional classification complexity, because the description of the goods on the invoice and packing list must reflect what is actually shipped rather than the best fraction in the load.

Nautica does not assign a definitive tariff code in advance for this stream. Buyers and importers should confirm the applicable classification, duty treatment and any import licensing or waste-shipment obligation with their own customs broker or the competent customs authority for the destination before contracting.