What Is Vanadium?

Vanadium  is a chemical element and its symbol is V and its atomic number is 23. It is a hard, silvery gray, ductile and malleable transition metal. The element is found only in chemically combined form in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer stabilizes the free metal somewhat against further oxidation. Andrés Manuel del Río discovered vanadium in 1801 by analyzing a new lead-bearing mineral he called "brown lead," and named the new element erythronium since, upon heating, most of its salts turned from their initial color to red. Four years later, however, he was convinced by other scientists that erythronium was identical to chromium. The element was rediscovered by Nils Gabriel Sefström in 1831, who named it vanadium after the Germanic goddess of beauty and fertility, Vanadís. Both names were attributed to the wide range of colors found in vanadium compounds. Del Rio's lead mineral was later renamed vanadinite for its vanadium content.

Vanadium occurs naturally in about 65 different minerals and in fossil fuel deposits. It is produced in China and Russia from steel smelter slag; other countries produce it either from the flue dust of heavy oil, or as a byproduct of uranium mining. It is mainly used to produce specialty steel alloys such as high speed tool steels. The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.
Large amounts of vanadium ions are found in a few organisms, possibly as a toxin. The oxide and some other salts of vanadium have moderate toxicity. Particularly in the ocean, vanadium is used by some life forms as an active center of enzymes, such as the vanadium bromoperoxidase of some ocean algae. Vanadium is probably a micronutrient in mammals, including humans, but its precise role in this regard is unknown.

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