Extration of Titanium,急!

first, vacuum should not be used as TiCl4 is volatile and is in high temp.. applying vacuum would simply boil the molten stuff.

argon is to provide inert atmosphere and to avoid oxygen from entering the reaction vessel. at high temp., the metal extracted can be reactive, reacting with any oxygen and forms oxides; even not so, the reduction of titanium may not be complete, forming species like TiCl2 (as stated by Wikipedia).

i'm not sure if nitrogen can be used instead, but i found titanium nitride on wikipedia, suggesting that using nitrogen may not be a wise choice.