 Discovery Information
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| Who: Martin Klaproth |
| When: 1789 |
| Where: Germany |
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| Name Origin
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| From the mineral zircon |
| "Zirconium" in different languages. |
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| Sources
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| Zirconium is never found in nature as a free metal. Found in many minerals such as zircon (ZrSiO4) and baddeleyite (ZrO2). Annual production of zircon is around 1.2 million tonnes.
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| Primary producers are Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka and the USA.
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| Abundance
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| Universe: 0.05 ppm (by weight) |
| Sun: 0.04 ppm (by weight) |
| Carbonaceous meteorite: 6.7 ppm |
| Earth's Crust: 130 ppm |
| Seawater: 9 x 10-6 ppm
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| Human: |
| 50 ppb by weight |
| 3 ppb by atoms |
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| Uses
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| Used in alloys such as zircaloy which is used in nuclear applications since it does not readily absorb neutrons. Also used in catalytic converters, percussion caps and furnace bricks. Baddeleyite is used in lab crucibles. Zirconium nitride (ZrN) has been used more recently as an alternative to titanium nitride for coating drill bits. Both coatings are supposed to keep the bit sharper and cooler during cutting.
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| Extensively used by the chemical industry for piping in corrosive environments. |
| Because human tissues can easily tolerate this metal it is suitable for biocompatible implants, eg. some artificial joints
and limbs.
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| When alloyed with niobium, zirconium becomes superconductive at low temperatures and is used to make superconductive magnets with possible large-scale
electrical power uses.
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| History
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| Although it was discovered in 1789 by Martin Heinrich Klaproth it wasn't isolated until 1824, by Jöns Jakob Berzelius.
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| The zirconium-containing mineral zircon, or its variations (jargon, hyacinth, jacinth, or ligure), were mentioned in biblical
writings. The mineral was not known to contain a new element until Klaproth analyzed a jargon from Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. He named the new element Zirkonertz (zirconia). The impure metal was isolated
first by Berzelius by heating a mixture of potassium and potassium-zirconium fluoride in a small decomposition process conducted in an iron tube. Pure zirconium wasn't prepared until 1914.
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| The crystal bar process (or Iodide process), discovered by Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer in 1925, was the
first industrial process for the commercial production of pure ductile metallic zirconium. It was superseded by the Kroll
process.
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| Notes
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| This element has been detected in the sun and meteorites. Lunar rock samples brought back from several Apollo program missions
to the moon have a very high zirconium oxide content relative to terrestrial rocks.
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| Hazards
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| Compounds containing zirconium are not noted for toxicity. The metal dust can ignite in air and should be regarded as a major fire and explosion hazard.
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