Tantalum is a shiny, silvery metal which is soft when is pure. It is almost immune to chemical attack at temperatures below 150 C. Tantalum is virtually resistant to corrosion due to an oxide film on its surface.
Applications
Tantalum finds use in four areas: high-temperature applications, such as aircraft engines; electrical devices, such as capacitors; sirurgical impants and handling corrosive chemicals. It is rarely used as an alloying agent because it tends to make metals brittle. Tantalum resist corrosion and is almost impervious to chemical attack, for this reason it has been employed in chemical industry, e.g. for heat exchanger in boilers where strong acids are vaporized.
Tantalum in the environment
Because tantalum oxide …show more content…
is very insoluble, there is almost no tantalum to be found in natural waters. Few attemps have been made to measure its level in soils, revealing a range from 0.1 to 3 ppm. Only tiny amounts of tantalum are taken by plants: the amount in vegetation rarely exceeds 5 ppb.
The chief tantalum ores are tantalite, which also contains iron, manganese and niobium, and samarskite, which contains seven metals. Another ore which contains tantalum and niobium is pyrochlore. The main mining areas are Thailandia, Australia, Congo, Brazil, Portigal and Canada. The demand of tantalum is about 2300 tonnes a year. No assessment of total reserves of extractable metal have been reliably calculated.
Health effects of tantalum
May be harmful by inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption. Causes eye & skin irritation. Material is irritating to mucous membranes & upper respiratory tract.
There are no reports of adverse health effects in industrially exposed workers. Massive doses of tantalum given by intratracheal route to rats have produced respiratory tract lesions. In contact with tissue, metallic tantalum is inert.
Environmental effects of tantalum
Do not allow material to be released to the environment without proper governmental permits.
Isolate runoff of tantalum oxide to prevent environmental pollution.
Oxygen had been produced by several chemists prior to its discovery in 1774, but they failed to recognize it as a distinct element.
Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele both independently discovered oxygen, but Priestly is usually given credit for the discovery. They were both able to produce oxygen by heating mercuric oxide (HgO). Priestley called the gas produced in his experiments 'dephlogisticated air' and Scheele called his 'fire air'. The name oxygen was created by Antoine Lavoisier who incorrectly believed that oxygen was necessary to form all acids.
Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe and makes up nearly 21% of the earth's atmosphere. Oxygen accounts for nearly half of the mass of the earth's crust, two thirds of the mass of the human body and nine tenths of the mass of water. Large amounts of oxygen can be extracted from liquefied air through a process known as fractional distillation. Oxygen can also be produced through the electrolysis of water or by heating potassium chlorate …show more content…
(KClO3).
Oxygen is a highly reactive element and is capable of combining with most other elements. It is required by most living organisms and for most forms of combustion. Impurities in molten pig iron are burned away with streams of high pressure oxygen to produce steel. Oxygen can also be combined with acetylene (C2H2) to produce an extremely hot flame used for welding. Liquid oxygen, when combined with liquid hydrogen, makes an excellent rocket fuel. Ozone (O3) forms a thin, protective layer around the earth that shields the surface from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Oxygen is also a component of hundreds of thousands of organic compounds.
Sulfur, the tenth most abundant element in the universe, has been known since ancient times. Sometime around 1777, Antoine Lavoisier convinced the rest of the scientific community that sulfur was an element. Sulfur is a component of many common minerals, such as galena (PbS), gypsum (CaSO4·2(H2O), pyrite (FeS2), sphalerite (ZnS or FeS), cinnabar (HgS), stibnite (Sb2S3), epsomite (MgSO4·7(H2O)), celestite (SrSO4) and barite (BaSO4). Nearly 25% of the sulfur produced today is recovered from petroleum refining operations and as a byproduct of extracting other materials from sulfur containing ores. The majority of the sulfur produced today is obtained from underground deposits, usually found in conjunction with salt deposits, with a process known as the Frasch process.
Sulfur is a pale yellow, odorless and brittle material.
It displays three allotropic forms: orthorhombic, monoclinic and amorphous. The orthorhombic form is the most stable form of sulfur. Monoclinic sulfur exists between the temperatures of 96°C and 119°C and reverts back to the orthorhombic form when cooled. Amorphous sulfur is formed when molten sulfur is quickly cooled. Amorphous sulfur is soft and elastic and eventually reverts back to the orthorhombic form.
Most of the sulfur that is produced is used in the manufacture of sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Large amounts of sulfuric acid, nearly 40 million tons, are used each year to make fertilizers, lead-acid batteries, and in many industrial processes. Smaller amounts of sulfur are used to vulcanize natural rubbers, as an insecticide (the Greek poet Homer mentioned "pest-averting sulphur" nearly 2,800 years ago!), in the manufacture of gunpowder and as a dying agent.
In addition to sulfuric acid, sulfur forms other interesting compounds. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is a gas that smells like rotten eggs. Sulfur dioxide (SO2), formed by burning sulfur in air, is used as a bleaching agent, solvent, disinfectant and as a refrigerant. When combined with water (H2O), sulfur dioxide forms sulfurous acid (H2SO3), a weak acid that is a major component of acid
rain.
Selenium is a chemical element with symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal with properties that are intermediate between those of its periodic table column-adjacent chalcogen elements sulfur and tellurium. It rarely occurs in its elemental state in nature, or as pure ore compounds. Selenium (Greek σελήνη selene meaning "Moon") was discovered in 1817 by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who noted the similarity of the new element to the previously known tellurium (named for the Earth).
Selenium is found impurely in metal sulfide ores, where it partially replaces the sulfur. Commercially, selenium is produced as a byproduct in the refining of these ores, most often during copper production. Minerals that are pure selenide or selenate compounds are known, but are rare. The chief commercial uses for selenium today are in glassmaking and in pigments. Selenium is a semiconductorand is used in photocells. Uses in electronics, once important, have been mostly supplanted by silicon semiconductor devices. Selenium continues to be used in a few types of DC power surge protectors and one type of fluorescent quantum dot.
Selenium salts are toxic in large amounts, but trace amounts are necessary for cellular function in many organisms, including all animals and is an ingredient in many multi-vitamins and other dietary supplements, including infant formula. Selenium is a component of the antioxidant enzymes glutathione peroxidase and thioredoxin reductase (which indirectly reduce certain oxidized molecules in animals and some plants). It is also found in three deiodinase enzymes, which convert one thyroid hormone to another. Selenium requirements in plants differ by species, with some plants requiring relatively large amounts, and others apparently requiring none