Abstract: The production of refractory metals and alloys has always been a high energy costs, complex and difficult metallurgical and materials processing process. How to extract the high-value metals and alloys direct from complex refractory metal oxides compounds is a very important and difficult research focus in the fields of modern metallurgy and materials preparation. However, the new electro-deoxidation technology developed in recent years may bring a route to this unsolved problem. In this paper, we review the conventional molten salt electrolysis process for production of refractory metals and analyze its shortages. Moreover, the
new electro-deoxidation process, i.e., the Fray-Farthing-Chen (FFC) Cambridge process is introduced in detail. In particular, the research progress and prospect of the solid oxide membrane (SOM) process modified by our group are presented and highlighted in this paper.

Key words: molten salt electrolysis, refractory metal, alloy, solid oxide membrane