Vanadium, tech steel, health and pollution control..
Approximately 80% of vanadium produced is used as ferrovanadium or as a steel additive. Other uses;
* In such alloys as:
o specialty stainless steel, e.g. for use in surgical instruments and tools.
o rust resistant and high speed tool steels.
o mixed with aluminium in titanium alloys used in jet engines and high-speed airframes
* Vanadium steel alloys are used in axles, crankshafts, gears, and other critical components.
* It is an important carbide stabilizer in making steels.
* Because of its low fission neutron cross section, vanadium has nuclear applications.
* Vanadium foil is used in cladding titanium to steel.
* Vanadium-gallium tape is used in superconducting magnets (175,000 gauss).
* Vanadium(V) oxide (vanadium pentoxide, V2O5) is used as a catalyst in manufacturing sulfuric acid (via the Contact process) and maleic anhydride. It is also used in making ceramics.
* Glass coated with vanadium dioxide (VO2) can block infrared radiation (and not visible light) at some specific temperature.
* Electrical fuel cells and storage batteries such as Vanadium redox batteries.
* Added to corundum to make simulated Alexandrite jewelry.
* Vanadate electrochemical conversion coatings for protecting steel against rust and corrosion
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History
Vanadium (Scandinavian goddess, Vanadis) was originally discovered by Andrés Manuel del Río (a Spanish mineralogist) in Mexico City, in 1801. He called it "brown lead" (now named vanadinite). Through experimentation, its colors reminded him of chromium, so he named the element panchromium. He later renamed this compound erythronium, since most of the salts turned red when heated. The French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils incorrectly declared that del Rio's new element was only impure chromium. Del Rio thought himself to be mistaken and accepted the statement of the French chemist that was also backed by Del Rio's friend Baron Alexander von Humboldt
In 1831, Sefström of Sweden rediscovered vanadium in a new oxide he found while working with some iron ores and later that same year Friedrich Wöhler confirmed del Rio's earlier work. Later, George William Featherstonhaugh, one of the first US geologists, suggested that the element should be named "rionium" after Del Rio, but this never happened.
Metallic vanadium was isolated by Henry Enfield Roscoe in 1867, who reduced vanadium(III) chloride (VCl3) with hydrogen. The name vanadium comes from Vanadis, a goddess in Scandinavian mythology, because the element has beautiful multicolored chemical compounds.
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Biological role
In biology, a vanadium atom is an essential component of some enzymes, particularly the vanadium nitrogenase used by some nitrogen-fixing microorganisms. Vanadium is essential to ascidians or sea squirts in Vanadium Chromagen Proteins. The concentration of vanadium in their blood is more than 100 times higher than the concentration of vanadium in the seawater around them. Rats and chickens are also known to require vanadium in very small amounts and deficiencies result in reduced growth and impaired reproduction.
Administration of oxovanadium compounds has been shown to alleviate diabetes mellitus symptoms in certain animal models and humans. Much like the chromium effect on sugar metabolism, the mechanism of this effect is unknown.
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