Zircon sand, ZrSiO4, is chlorinated in an electrothermally‐heated fluidized bed reactor using calcined petroleum coke as the reducing agent and chlorine as the chlorinating agent. The electrothermally‐heated fluidized bed reactor proved to be versatile and effective for the chlorination of zircon sand. The rate of the reaction can be expressed by the formula The reaction was found to be of zero order with respect to the chlorine concentration, which suggests that chlorine is strongly adsorbed on the solid particles; as such, the concentration of chlorine in the gas phase has no effect on the reaction rate. The activation energy for the reaction was found to be 10.55 Kcal/gram mole which is indicative of control by the rate of a surface reaction or adsorption step.

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