Vanadium
Vanadium is a hard, gray metal primarily used as an alloy for strengthening steel. It was originally discovered by the Spanish-Mexican mineralogist Andres Manuel del Rio (1764-1849) in 1801. He called it erythronium. However, his European colleagues erroneously convinced him that his find was not a newly discovered metal, but merely impure chromium. Vanadium was not rediscovered until 1830, when Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Selfström was running tests on iron ore treated with hydrochloric acid to assess the iron's brittleness. The treatments resulted in a black powder precipitate. One of the metals in the powder resembled uranium or chromium, but it was actually neither. Selfström identified it as a new metal, and subsequent tests showed that the compounds of the metal were multi-colored. This led Selfström to name it vanadium, after Vanadis, another name for the Norse goddess Freyja, who wears a divinely bright and sparkling necklace.
German chemist Friedrich Wöhler, who is credited with the isolation of aluminum and beryllium, was also researching the same materials and isolated vanadium shortly after Selfström did. Subsequent research on vanadium confirmed that del Rio's erythronium was indeed the same substance isolated by Selfström and Wöhler. The first pure commercial grade vanadium was isolated by English chemist Henry Enfield Roscoe (1833-1915) in 1867. One of its ores, roscoelite, was named for him.
Vanadium has an atomic weight of 50.9414. Its atomic number is 23, and its symbol is V. It is one of the transition elements of the periodic table. Pure vanadium is bright white. Found in a variety of minerals, including carnolite, vanadinite, and roscoelite, vanadium is considered to be the twenty-second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Though not as commonly known as many other metals, it is crucial to the metal-production and chemical industries. Vanadium is produced by reducing V2O5 with calcium under high pressure. Research is also being conducted on utilizing petroleum ash as a source of vanadium.
About 80 percent of vanadium used in industry goes into the making of ferrovanadium, which is vanadium alloyed with steel to increase its strength and resiliency. Steel having 0.2 to 5 percent vanadium is used for high-speed steel (cutting blades) and heat-resistant tools. Vanadium strengthens steel by giving it a sounder, fine-grained structure. Vanadium is also used in the bonding of certain metals, most notably in the fusing of titanium to steel. In addition, vanadium compounds are widely used in the production of sulfuric acid and many organic substances, including formaldehyde, benzoic acid, and aniline black for dyes. Vanadium is also utilized as a photographic developer, a reducing agent, and a drying agent in various paints.
Vanadium is toxic. However, it has been found that exposure to small doses of it may lower serum cholesterol levels in the human body and reverse hardening of the arteries.
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