VOLCANO MADNESS: Re: [Geology2] Re: One of the world's largest scandium deposits found in Queensland

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Re: [Geology2] Re: One of the world's largest scandium deposits found in Queensland

Ja wohl! Thanks for the extra info, Robert.

Lin

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Robert Blau <robert-blau@webtv.net> wrote:

My transition metal consultant writes, rather interestingly, stuff i didn't know . . .

"Scandium is interesting stuff. With an odd atomic number, it comes from an area of the periodic table in which elements of odd atomic numbers are rather rare ones, and they also have few stable isotopes. For an example, titanium (element #22) is right besides scandium (#21) in the periodic table, but since it has an even atomic number, it is a lot more common that scandium is.

The article below fails to mention the aerospace uses of scandium. There is a Russian fighter plane that made mostly of an alloy of titanium, scandium, and a few other metals, with titanium being a major component but scandium being a minor component because of its rarity.

If you start off with carbon-12 in very hot stars, it and its products get repeatedly by helium-4 nuclei, and hence larger amounts of even-numbered elements get produced in those stars, including oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulfur, argon, calcium, titanium, chromium, iron, nickel, and zinc.

To produce the odd-numbered elements in this range generally takes the bombardment of the even-numbered ones by free neutrons in supernovae. Then, there has to be beta decay to give the extra protons, and since beta decay is governed by the weak nuclear force, that is a relatively-slow process.

On the other hand, if I took a calcium nucleus and bombarded it with an alpha particle, then zowie!, that fusion is governed by the strong nuclear force and it happens rapidly, yielding titanium. Likewise, when iron is bombarded by energetic alpha particles in supernovae, nickel is produced, and nickel is a fairly-common metal, as is demonstrated by all of the nickel-iron meteorites that we find.

Yttrium is also a rather-rare metal because it has the atomic number of 39. In contrast, elements #38 and #40 are a lot more common.

So, in case you hadn't read about all of this already, the abundances of these elements are governed by nuclear physics." [Far out, nicht wahr?]

RB, ALSO finds Scandium interesting because it's the FIRST transition metal in the Periodic Table

> Posted by: "Victor Healey" vic.nospam@gmail.com vic_healey
> Date: Tue Oct 11, 2011 1:02 am ((PDT))
>
>
> http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201110/s3335822.htm
>
> One of the world's largest scandium deposits found in Queensland
>
> By Karen Hunt
>
> Monday, 10/10/2011
>
> A north Queensland mining company has discovered one of the world's largest deposits of the rare earth, scandium.
>
> Scandium is used to make solid oxide fuel cells, which are used generating electricity from natural gas and renewable fuels..
>
> This discovery has been made at a former nickel mine at Greenvale, just out of Townsville.
>
> With scadnium selling currently selling for $5,000 a kilo, owner Metallica Metals says it will double the size of a planned cobalt and nickel mine at the site.
>
> Metallica managing director Andrew Gillies says the deposit's quality and purity are outstanding, and very unusual.
>
> "Scandium is found probably in most rocks, typically perhaps five to 15 parts per million; we've got sometimes a thousand times that," he said.
>
> "We would think that we've got something unique. There's only three resources in the world and we've got two of them."
>
> Discussion on Slash Dot
>
> http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/10/0411236/massive-rare-earth-deposit-found-in-australia
>