Vanadium Metal Powder / V Powder , 25um, 99.9%

Vanadium Metal Powder

Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard transition metal, silver-gray, ductile and malleable. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once artificially isolated, the formation of an oxide layer (passivation) somewhat stabilizes the free metal against further oxidation.

Andrés Manuel del Río discovered vanadium compounds in 1801 in Mexico, analyzing a new mineral advantage he called “brown lead” and assumed that its qualities were due to the presence of a new element, which he called erythronium (derived from the Greek for “red” “) because once heated, most of the salts became red. However, four years later, other scientists convinced him (erroneously) that the erythronium was identical to chromium. Vanadium chlorides were generated in 1830 by Nils Gabriel Sefström, who showed was involved a new element, which he called “vanadium”, in honor of the Scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility, Vanadis (Freyja). Both names have been attributed to the wide range of colors found in vanadium compounds. The Del Rio lead ore was later renamed vanadinite due to its vanadium content. In 1867 Henry Enfield Roscoe obtained the pure element.

Vanadium is naturally found in about 65 minerals and in fossil fuel stores. It is produced in China and Russia by steel smelting slag; other countries produce it directly from magnetite, heavy oil combustion dust or as a by-product of uranium mining. It is mainly used to produce special steel alloys, such as high-speed tool steels. The most important industrial compound of vanadium, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.