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Vanadium [V] locate me
CAS-ID: 7440-62-2
An: 23 N: 28
Am: 50.9415 (1) g/mol
Group No: 5
Group Name: Transition metals
Block: d-block  Period: 4
State: solid at 298 K
Colour: silvery grey metallic Classification: Metallic
Boiling Point: 3680K (3407°C)
Melting Point: 2183K (1910°C)
Superconducting temperature: 5.40K (-267.7°C)
Density: 6.0g/cm3
Availability: Vanadium is available in several forms including foil, granules, powder, rod, and turnings.
Discovery Information
Who: Nils Sefstrom
When: 1830
Where: Sweden
Name Origin
From Vanadis the Scandinavian goddess.
 "Vanadium" in different languages.
Sources
Vanadium is never found unbound in nature but it does occur in about 65 different minerals among which are patronite (VS4), vanadinite [Pb5(VO4)3Cl], and carnotite [K2(UO2)2(VO4)2.3H2O]. Vanadium is also present in bauxite, and in carbon containing deposits such as crude oil, coal, oil shale and tar sands. The spectra of vanadium has also been detected in light from the Sun and some other stars.
Annual world wide production is around 7 thousand tons.
Abundance
 Universe: 1 ppm (by weight)
 Sun: 0.4 ppm (by weight)
 Carbonaceous meteorite: 62 ppm
 Earth's Crust: 190 ppm
 Seawater:
   Atlantic surface: 1.1 x 10-3 ppm
   Atlantic deep: n/a ppm
   Pacific surface: 1.6 x 10-3 ppm
   Pacific deep: 1.8 x 10-3 ppm
 Human:
   30 ppb by weight
   4 ppb by atoms
Uses
It is mixed with other metals to make very strong and durable alloys which are used in construction materials, tools, surgical instruments, springs and jet engines. Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) is used as a catalyst in manufacturing sulfuric acid, a dye and colour-fixer.
Glass coated with vanadium dioxide (VO2) can block infrared radiation (and not visible light) at some specific temperature.
History
Vanadium was originally discovered by Andres Manuel del Rio (a Spanish-born Mexican mineralogist) in Mexico City, in 1801. He called it "brown lead" (now named vanadinite, Pb5(VO4)3Cl). Through experimentation, its colours 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, Sefstrom 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 multicoloured chemical compounds
Notes
It is one of the 26 elements commonly found in living things.
Hazards
Powdered metallic vanadium is a fire hazard, and all vanadium compounds are highly toxic. Vanadium compounds may cause lung cancer if inhaled.