Titanium Scrap: How Grade 2 and Grade 5 Solids and Turnings Are Sold

Which Titanium Scrap Grades Are Traded?

Most titanium scrap is either commercially pure (CP) titanium, which is nearly all titanium with a little iron and controlled oxygen, or Grade 5, the alpha-beta alloy widely machined in aerospace work. Within those two families, five grades cover nearly everything a seller will hold.

The chart makes the main point plain: the four CP grades look almost identical. Grade 1 and Grade 2 differ in oxygen and iron at levels too small to show, and Grades 7 and 11 add only about 0.15% palladium. Grade 5 is the only grade with a large, easily measured alloy content: about 6% aluminium and 4% vanadium.

You may also meet Grade 23, the extra-low-interstitial version of Ti-6Al-4V used for medical implants. It reads like Grade 5 on an analyser, so if your paperwork says Grade 23, declare it as such and keep it apart.

How Do You Tell Grade 2 from Grade 5 Titanium Scrap?

Vanadium is the quickest test: Grade 5 carries about 4% vanadium, which a handheld XRF reads in seconds, while Grade 2 carries none. Aluminium at about 6% confirms it, but aluminium is a light element and needs an analyser with a light-element setup, or spark OES. For the two grades side by side, see Titanium Grade 2 vs Grade 5.

The CP grades are harder. Palladium shows on XRF, so a palladium line separates Grades 7 and 11 from Grades 1 and 2 (see Grade 2 vs Grade 7 compared). But Grade 1 against Grade 2, or Grade 11 against Grade 7, comes down mainly to oxygen and iron, and a handheld XRF cannot read oxygen at all. Separating them takes paperwork, hardness testing or a laboratory analysis. That is why documents matter more in titanium than in most nickel alloys.

Markings That Settle the Question

Heat-exchanger and condenser tube is usually printed along its length with the grade and the tube specification, commonly ASTM B338. Plate is marked to ASTM B265 and bar to B348. If a bundle still carries those markings, photograph them before anyone cuts it, because the printed lengths are often the first thing lost when tube is chopped. Aerospace Grade 5 is typically bought to AMS 4911 for plate and sheet or AMS 4928 for bar and forgings, and the certificate travels with the job. The titanium specifications page lists the common ones by product form.

If you have a reading but no paperwork, the grade identifier tool shows which titanium grades it matches. For when a laboratory result is worth paying for, see XRF, OES or lab analysis.

Solids, Tube and Plate: What Buyers Check

Solid titanium scrap sells on a confirmed grade, clean metal and nothing attached that isn't titanium. Each common form has its own traps.

Condenser and Heat-Exchanger Tube

Grade 2 tube and pipe scrap comes mainly from condenser retubing at power stations and from desalination plant rebuilds. Tube pulled from a bundle often still has steel or copper-alloy tube-sheet stubs, ferrules or baffle pieces on it. Cut them off: a buyer will either deduct them or treat the bundle as mixed. Scale and deposits in the bore are weight that isn't metal, so drain and dry tube before it is weighed.

Plate and Plate Heat-Exchanger Packs

Plate heat-exchanger plates are often Grade 1, chosen because it presses easily. Strip the gaskets and adhesive before sale. Watch for clad plate, where a thin titanium layer is bonded to carbon steel: it reads as titanium on the face you test and as steel on the other, and it must be declared as clad.

Grade 5 Forgings, Bar Ends and Machined Parts

Grade 5 solids, such as forging crops, bar ends and rejected machined parts, are usually clean when they come straight from an aerospace shop. Remove steel inserts, thread inserts and bushings, and keep painted, coated or anodised parts separate if the buyer asks. Retired components should travel with their scrapping or release paperwork.

What Makes Titanium Turnings Acceptable for Remelting?

Titanium turnings are acceptable for remelting when they are a single grade, dry, oil-free, bright rather than burnt and free of tool fragments. Miss any one of those and the drum may go to a lower-value route, even if the grade is right.

Tool fragments are the problem specific to titanium. Titanium is often machined with tungsten carbide inserts, and chipped tips end up in the chips. Carbide is far denser than titanium and does not dissolve in the melt, so it survives as a high-density inclusion: a hard particle that can start a fatigue crack in a rotating part. Vacuum arc remelting does little to remove such particles. Cold hearth melting, where molten metal flows across a water-cooled hearth before reaching the mould, lets dense particles sink and be trapped, and it is the route that makes recycled turnings usable in aerospace-quality titanium. Buyers still screen for carbide, and contaminated lots are discounted or refused. Put a tungsten carbide scrap bin at each machine for broken inserts, so they earn something instead of costing you.

Colour tells you about oxidation. Bright silver or light straw chips are fine. Blue, purple or grey-white chips were overheated during cutting and picked up oxygen and nitrogen, which harden titanium and have to be diluted in the melt. Ask machinists to bin heavily discoloured chips separately.

For why turnings are discounted against solids in general, read solids vs turnings. The Grade 5 turnings page covers that form in detail, and the scrap preparation guide covers drying and packing.

How Should Titanium Turnings Be Stored and Shipped?

Store titanium turnings dry, covered and away from any source of ignition, and never handle them like steel swarf. Fine chips and dust can be ignited by a spark, a hot grinding wheel or friction, and burning titanium is very hard to put out.

• Keep them dry. Wet chips are a melt problem and a safety problem: water on burning titanium makes the fire worse and gives off hydrogen.
• No hot work nearby. No cutting, grinding or welding beside the storage area.
• Have the right extinguishing material. Dry sand or a Class D extinguisher, never water, foam or CO₂.
• Use closed containers. Lidded steel drums or lined bags, labelled with the grade, keep rain out and grades apart.
• Never mix with other turnings. Titanium fines in a bin of steel chips are a fire risk and ruin both lots.

Rules for shipping metal turnings and fines vary by transport mode and destination, so confirm current packing requirements with your freight forwarder before you book.

Where Does Titanium Scrap Go After You Sell It?

Clean, identified titanium scrap goes back into titanium ingot; mixed, oxidised or contaminated scrap generally goes into ferrotitanium, which is made by melting titanium with iron for steelmaking. Which route a lot can reach is one of the main reasons grade evidence and clean preparation change its value.

The remelt route values titanium as titanium alloy, and for Grade 5 it also uses the aluminium and vanadium already in the metal. The ferrotitanium route values it mainly as a source of titanium for steel, where vanadium, palladium and low oxygen earn nothing extra. A seller who can prove grade and cleanliness is, in effect, choosing the route.

What Moves the Value of a Titanium Scrap Lot?

Titanium scrap is valued on grade certainty, form and cleanliness more than on titanium content, because almost every lot is mostly titanium anyway. These are the factors that move an offer:

• Proof of grade. Markings, certificates or readings on each piece let a buyer place the lot in the right melt without a lab analysis first.
• Form. Solids, tube and plate sit ahead of turnings, and clean, sized turnings ahead of fines.
• Carbide and foreign metal. One wrong piece can move a lot from the remelt route to ferrotitanium.
• Oxidation, oil and moisture. All three cut the usable metal and add handling cost.
• Palladium grades kept apart. Grades 7 and 11 are wanted for palladium grades; mixed into Grade 2, their palladium earns nothing and can put the lot outside Grade 2 chemistry.
• Quantity and consistency. A melter plans around lot size, and one consistent lot is easier to use than several small mixed ones.

The general principles behind scrap offers are covered in what decides the value of a lot.

Why Must Titanium Never Be Mixed with Nickel Alloy Scrap?

Titanium and nickel alloys are melted by different routes, and each is a contaminant in the other. A titanium offcut in a drum of Inconel adds titanium the nickel specification may not allow; a nickel alloy chip in titanium turnings adds nickel, chromium and iron that titanium specifications allow only in traces.

The mix-up happens most in shops that machine both, which is common in aerospace work (see nickel alloy scrap from chemical plants and aerospace). Both are non-magnetic and their chips look alike. Weight is the quick tell: titanium is about 4.5 g/cm³, roughly half the density of most nickel alloys, so a titanium piece feels strikingly light against an Inconel piece of the same size. Titanium vs nickel alloy sets out the other differences.

Selling or Exporting Titanium Scrap: What to Send

Send the grade, form, weight, location and photographs, together with whatever proves the grade. A complete first description saves a round of questions and lets a buyer judge which route the lot suits.

• Grade, and where the material came from (condenser retube, forging shop, chemical plant).
• Form and size: tube, plate, forgings, bar ends or turnings.
• Weight per container and in total.
• Markings, mill certificates or analyser readings.
• For turnings: whether they are dried, carbide-free and single-grade, and their colour.
• Clear photographs, including close-ups of markings.

For cross-border lots, titanium waste and scrap is classified under HS heading 8108.30, separate from the nickel scrap heading, so a mixed container is a customs problem as well as a metallurgical one. Documents to prepare before exporting alloy scrap covers the rest. When you're ready, send the details of your titanium lot and we'll review your enquiry.

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