Rhenium And Volcanic Ash

[jethrotull]

Getting commercial aircraft to handle volcanic ash regularly will require better turbines. These are a Rhenium alloy. A little rhenium is modest demand, but there is such little supply.

btw - I know Rhenium isn't precious, but it will be if they use it in turbines for civil aircraft.

[pyracantha]

Getting commercial aircraft to handle volcanic ash regularly will require better turbines. These are a Rhenium alloy. A little rhenium is modest demand, but there is such little supply.

btw - I know Rhenium isn't precious, but it will be if they use it in turbines for civil aircraft.

From some very quick research, the benefit of Rhenium alloys are that they allow turbines to run at higher temperatures. I am curious what is the specific advantage of this in dealing with volcanic ash?

Cost seems to be about $10,000/kg.

Is this the start of a Rhenium bubble?

[harrywatson66]

A process for extracting precious metal from volcanic ore includes the steps of crushing the ore, heating the ore in a hydrogen atmosphere to soften oxide mineral encapsulating the precious metal, cooling the ore, grinding the ore, and processing the ore to extract precious metal.