PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Niobium was discovered by the English chemist Charles Hatchett in 1801.[1] He found a new element in a mineral sample that had been sent to England from Massachusetts, United States in 1734 by John Winthrop F.R.S. (grandson of John Winthrop the Younger) and named the mineral columbite and the new element columbium after Columbia, the poetical name for the United States.[2][3][4] The columbium discovered by Hatchett was probably a mixture of the new element with tantalum.[2]
Products
Niobium was discovered by the English chemist Charles Hatchett in 1801.[1] He found a new element in a mineral sample that had been sent to England from Massachusetts, United States in 1734 by John Winthrop F.R.S. (grandson of John Winthrop the Younger) and named the mineral columbite and the new element columbium after Columbia, the poetical name for the United States.[2][3][4] The columbium discovered by Hatchett was probably a mixture of the new element with tantalum.[2]
Palladium
Niobium was discovered by the English chemist Charles Hatchett in 1801.[1] He found a new element in a mineral sample that had been sent to England from Massachusetts, United States in 1734 by John Winthrop F.R.S. (grandson of John Winthrop the Younger) and named the mineral columbite and the new element columbium after Columbia, the poetical name for the United States.[2][3][4] The columbium discovered by Hatchett was probably a mixture of the new element with tantalum.[2]
The largest use of palladium is in catalytic converters for automobiles.
Finely divided palladium is used as a catalyst for hydrogenation/dehydrogenation reactions and for petroleum cracking.
The metal is used in jewelry, for example in white gold (an alloy of gold decolorized by the addition of palladium).
Palladium is used in dentistry, watch making, and in making surgical instruments and electrical contacts.
It is also used to purify hydrogen because the gas easily diffuses through heated palladium.
Rhenium
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table in 1869. From gaps he saw in the table, Mendeleev predicted the existence of undiscovered elements.
He said two of the elements he had predicted would have similar properties to manganese. He called these eka-manganese, now technetium, and dvi-manganese, now rhenium. (1) (Sanskrit: ‘eka’ means first and ‘dvi’ means second.)
Rhenium is used with platinum as catalysts in the production of lead-free, high-octane gasoline.
The metal is used in alloys for jet engines and in tungsten and molybdenum based alloys.
It is widely used as filaments for mass spectrographs.
Rhenium is also used as an electrical contact material.
Rhenium catalysts are exceptionally resistant to poisoning from nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorous and are useful in the hydrogenation of fine chemicals.
Seaborgium
Discovery of Seaborgium
Seaborgium was first synthesized in 1974 at the Lawrence-Berkeley Laboratory, USA, by a team of scientists led by Albert Ghiorso and at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia.
The element was named after Nobel prize winner Glenn Theodore Seaborg, the American nuclear chemist.
Seaborgium is of research interest only.
Yttrium
The story of yttrium’s discovery begins in 1787, when Carl Arrhenius found a coal-like mineral in a feldspar/quartz mine near Ytterby, Sweden. The mine had been developed in the early 18th century as a result of the mineral requirements of the local pottery industry.
Arrhenius called the black mineral ytterbite after Ytterby. Bengt Geijer, the inspector of mines in Stockholm, carried out a rough analysis of ytterbite. He reported that the mineral contained iron and speculated that it might also contain tungsten. (1), (2)
Yttrium is often used in alloys, increasing the strength of aluminum and magnesium alloys.
It is also used as a deoxidizer for non-ferrous metals such as vanadium.
Yttrium is used as a catalyst in ethylene polymerization.
Yttrium-90, a radioactive isotope, is used in treatments for various cancers and is used in precision medical needles to sever pain-transmitting nerves in the spinal cord.
Yttrium oxide is the most important compound of yttrium. It is used to make the high-temperature superconductor YBCO (yttrium barium copper oxide). This substance becomes superconducting at -178 oC (meaning that it can be kept in a superconducting state using liquid nitrogen, rather than more expensive and more difficult to handle liquid helium).
Yttrium oxide is also used to make yttrium iron garnets (Y3 Fe5O12) which are very effective microwave filters, blocking some microwave frequencies, while allowing others through in communication devices such as satellites.
Yttrium doped with europium is used to produce phosphors, which provide the red color in color television tubes.
