Titanium
Most of Iluka's titanium minerals products are used to manufacture titanium dioxide pigment. Pure white, highly refractive and ultra-violet absorbing, titanium dioxide is used in protective coatings such as house and car paints, sunscreens, plastics, paper, and textiles.
Because titanium minerals are non-toxic, non-fibrogenic and biologically inert they can be used safely in foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
Amongst a range of other uses, rutile and synthetic rutile can be used to make titanium metal, which is essential to the aerospace industry because of its lightness, strength and durability. Titanium metal is also used in desalination plants and corrosive chemical industries, because of its inertness and resistance to corrosion. Its non-reactive properties make titanium metal one of the few materials that can be used in the human body as hip replacements and pacemakers.
Titanium metal is increasingly being used in sports equipment, jewellery and advanced engineering applications.
Rutile and leucoxene are further used as a flux material in welding electrodes for shipbuilding and civil engineering.
Zircon
Zircon is a hard, glassy mineral used for the manufacture of ceramics and refractories and also in a range of other high-tech industrial and chemical applications.
It is used extensively for ceramic glazes, most commonly applied in kitchen tiles, dinner-ware, bathroom products and decorative ceramics.
Industrial ceramics made using zircon are used for heat and abrasion resistance. Some industrial ceramics are referred to as refractories - materials that retain their physical shape and chemical composition when subjected to very high temperatures.
With a melting point of around 1,800C, refractories are used as linings to protect furnaces and kilns for smelting metals and for the manufacture of chemicals.
Resistance to corrosion makes zircon products ideal for use in the chemical industry and in desalination plants.
One of the early discoveries for zircon use was for the manufacture of phosphates for kidney dialysis. Zircon compounds have a low toxicity and are now increasingly preferred in the manufacture of some foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and medicines.