Tantalum ore concentrate currently sells for over $150/kg. Making metallic tantalum powder from the oxide is barely interesting even if the FFC process works quite well. Tantalum would remain an expensive specialty metal. Titanium dioxide, OTOH, is closer to $150 per tonne. A cheap process to convert that inexpensive raw material to metal would be one of the most impressive advances in industrial metal production in decades.
There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article:
In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.")
The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi.
My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.
There's an ugly licensing fight in the history of the FFC Cambridge process. See the section "Commercial challenges" in this article:
http://www.saimm.co.za/Journal/v111n03p199.pdf
In 2000 Cambridge University Technical Service issued a sub-license for the technology that British Titanium Plc used for the purpose of producing bulk titanium and titanium alloys. BTi worked closely with researchers from the Fray group (one F of the Fray, Farthing, Chen inventors whose names make up "FFC.")
The US Office of Naval Research issued contracts to BTi for R&D work in 2000 and 2002. In 2002 DARPA started funding more expensive scale-up work also associated with BTi. In 2004 NASA issued an even larger contract to BTi. Cambridge spun off Metalysis in 2002 with another license, but Metalysis didn't seem to be making much progress compared with BTi. In 2005, CUTS revoked the sub-license granted to BTi and made all of the IP exclusive to Metalysis. The license revocation destroyed BTi.
My interpretation: CUTS crippled BTi because Metalysis wasn't making enough progress on implementation to compete against BTi. But CUTS really crippled the whole concept because the experts that had been working for and with BTi didn't want to work with Metalysis after getting screwed by CUTS. Metalysis "pivoted" to tantalum and has failed to make notable progress there, too. Maybe the application to titanium will finally resume progress toward industrialization after the patents expire.