Turkey to become high-purity boron producer

Turkey is set export the commercially precious material boron in the near future thanks to the recent development of better technology, according to the members of a project team.

The project, developed by Yıldırım Beyazıt University in Ankara in cooperation with a defense industry firm, will be used particularly in fuel supplies for space rockets and long-range missiles.

"There have been very important research and development studies regarding boron in recent years, and the most valuable product that is developed from boron is 'elemental boron,'" Mükerrem Şahin, head of the project team and assistant professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), told Anadolu Agency in an interview.      

"It is a well-known fact that these kinds of products are widely used in the space and aviation defense industry and in long-range missiles. As a result of our studies which have been ongoing for a while, the laboratory and industrial conditions of the boron have been finalized and it is now at the production stage. The necessary approval and accreditation process is ongoing," he said.      

Preliminary approval has been given to the team that applied for a patent for the technology, Şahin said.  
   
"A facility to develop elemental boron with this new technology has been constructed. This represents the first facility to be established, and thanks to it, we learnt that Turkey is able to develop this technology at an industrial scale," he said.      

Şahin hailed the project as important for Turkey as one of the few countries capable of producing the product with such purity on a global scale.

"In the end, we are able to construct the system to develop our product with 96...