Vanadium

Most elements have to settle for being discovered once, but vanadium enjoys the honor of being discovered twice! Spanish mineralogist Andrés Manuel del Río was the first to find element 23. In 1801, del Río identified the new element in a sample of Mexican “brown lead” ore (which would later be known as vanadinite). But French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils said that del Río’s element was only chromium, and del Río took the other scientist’s word for it.

In 1831, Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovered element 23 while studying steel. Sefström named the element vanadium after Vanadis, which is another name for the Norse goddess Freyja. Later that year, German chemist Friedrich Wöhler determined that the element Sefström had discovered was, in fact, the same element that del Río had found three decades before. While del Río would be recognized as vanadium’s discoverer, the element would keep the name Sefström had chosen.

Vanadium is a bright white, corrosion-resistant metal. It’s relatively soft and ductile, meaning that you can stretch it without breaking it. Vanadium resists corrosion from acids and salt water.

Most vanadium—about 80 percent—is used in a steel alloy called ferrovanadium, which is much stronger and more corrosion-resistant than steel made without vanadium. Vanadium steel is used in everything from automobile and bicycle frames to tools and knives.

Because vanadium doesn’t absorb a lot of neutrons, vanadium alloys are often used in nuclear reactors, which rely on continually colliding neutrons to create energy.

The element is also used in vanadium redox batteries, which are a type of rechargeable battery. It’s used as a pigment in ceramics and glass, too.

Most vanadium-containing steel alloys use vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅). Vanadium pentoxide is also a catalyst for producing sulfuric acid, which is used in everything from fertilizer manufacturing to oil refining and wastewater processing.

Many silver vanadium oxide compounds are used in batteries.

Vanadyl sulfate (VOSO₄) is used in food supplements and experimental medications for people with diabetes or other disorders. Vanadium sulfate is often marketed as an aide for bodybuilders, although scientists are unsure whether the supplement is actually effective.

Because of its many oxidation states, vanadium has a complex chemistry. In nature, vanadium is found in one stable isotope (vanadium-51) and one unstable isotope (vanadium-50). But scientists have observed 24 radioactive isotopes of vanadium that have been created synthetically in a lab.

The longest-lived synthetic vanadium isotope is vanadium-49, with a half-life of 330 days, but most of vanadium's isotopes have a half-life of less than ten seconds.

Vanadium appears in some 65 different minerals, including vanadinite, roscoelite, carnotite, and patronite. It’s also found in phosphate rock, certain iron ores, and sometimes in crude oils, too. However, most vanadium now comes from magnetite (an iron ore).

China, South Africa, and Russia are the biggest vanadium producers.