Hefnium by Santa Titus

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:25:56 UTC

Hafnium is a transition metal that was discovered in 1923 by the Dutch physicist Dirk Coster and the Hungarian-Swedish chemist George Charles von Hevesy.
It’s atomic number 72, and its symbol is Hf.
At room temperature (20 degrees), hafnium is a solid metal.
It’s a lustrous, silvery, and ductile transition metal. It has an extremely high melting point and has very good resistance to corrosion.
Hafnium is a relatively rare element and is found in the earth's crust. It’s the 45th most abundant metal on earth.

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:27:44 UTC

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:29:27 UTC

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:29:54 UTC

The Bohr model shows that hafnium has a configuration of 2, 8,18,32,19,2

The Schrodinger model tells us that the subshell configuration is [Xe] 4f145d26s2

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:31:07 UTC

Hafnium is rarely found in nature and is instead present in most zirconium minerals at a concentration of up to 5%. Commercial sources of hafnium-bearing zirconium minerals are found in beach sands and river gravel in the United States, Australia, Brazil, western Africa and India.

Due to its ability to withstand extreme heat, Hafnium is commonly used in kilns, furnaces and rocket engines. It is also used in the nuclear industry because of its ability to attract neutrons.

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:35:21 UTC

With the expansion of the nuclear industry and space race, the demand for hafnium is increasing exponentially. Moreover, hafnium production is very low and difficult given the process required to separate it from zirconium.

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:35:58 UTC

The silvery grey transition metal hafnium is highly threatened. To put into perspective, the end-of-life Hafnium recycling coefficent is about 1%, indicating that due to it's contamination from the nuclear industry as well as the low percentage content in super alloys, there are limited recycling programs for Hafnium.

The possibility for recycling technogenic hafnium (fillings obtained from machining of industrial hafnium products) and impurities’ removal under electron beam melting (EBM) conditions is being examined, while the modern refining process involves separating Hafnium from Zirconium by chemical extraction, followed by a reduction to the metal sponge.

santatitus16 — 2024-02-14 22:36:56 UTC