Physically Titanium Dioxide Pigments are found in white powder form. High obscurity is present in these pigment powder. These pigment powders have very good whiteness, very high covering capacity, and good retardation capacity.


Due to these properties, the titanium dioxide pigments have a wide range of application and are considered valuable. These pigments are used in manufacturing of ink, plastic goods, paper, paints etc.

As sintered titanium has relatively poor mechanical properties, so its applications are constrained. But, it is used for a number of electrical applications. Titania is widely used as a pigment. As a pigment, it is used in powder form to exploit its optical properties.

The most common form of titanium dioxide as pigment substance is its powder form. As a pigment, it provides whiteness and opacity to paints and coatings, plastics, paper, inks, food, cosmetic and fibers. The most common form of titanium dioxide as a pigment is white pigment. This is because, it is very white and very high refractive index. The bright whiteness and high refractive index of titanium dioxide make it to become as an effective opacifier for pigments. It is also used as an opacifier in cosmetics, sunscreen, paper, paints etc.

By processing the naturally occurring rutiles or ilmenite minerals, these pigments are derived. Both, these two are rutiles and ilmenite, the ores of titanium dioxide.

There are two processes of manufacturing Titanium Dioxide Pigments. These two processes are:

Sulphate Process
Sulphate Process is the first process that was used to convert ilmenite into titanium dioxide. Some sulphate process plants have been built to produce a very big quantity of waste iron sulfate and to manufacture low quality products for most of the applications. Through the process, the pigments produced are called anatase. These pigments are used mainly used in the paper industry, ceramics and inks manufacturing.

Chlorine Process
In chlorine process, the chlorine reacts to synthetic rutile and form volatile titanium tetrachloride. Later on, this is oxidized to obtain iron chloride and other impurities. To produce 5-6 tonnes of titanium dioxide pigments, about one tonne of chlorine is needed. Chlorine process has been separated into another subprocess that is called Chloride Process.

Chloride process
This process requires to get processed from ilmenite into rutile form. It means to remove the iron components to obtain crude titanium dioxide that is also called synthetic rutile. Generally. To manufacture 1 tonne of Titanium dioxide pigments, 1.6 tonne synthetic rutile is required.