Every element has many uses, however the average person has no idea what most of the uses are. Most of the elements many people do not know about the vital roles they play in our everyday lives. Element 52, otherwise known as Tellurium (Te) is one of forty-four elements that are at risk of running out or endangered. Tellurium is a metalloid and has an atomic mass of 127.6 grams Tellurium is listed as one of nine elements that there is a serious threat of them running out in the next one hundred years. This does not mean that these nine elements will vanish from the planet but at some point the world will need to change how we use the element or find an alternative element to accomplish the previous element’s task. Tellurium has an atomic …show more content…
number of 52 with an atomic mass of 127.6 grams and is found in Period 5 and Group 16 of the Periodic Table. Tellurium is a Metalloid that is most commonly found as a powdery grey substance with a metallic sheen. At a temperature of twenty degrees Celsius Tellurium is at a solid state with a density of 6.232 grams per cubic centimeter. Te also has a melting point of 449.51 degrees Celsius and a boiling point of 988 degrees Celsius. The electron configuration of Tellurium is [Kr] 4d105s25p4. When Tellurium is burned it emits a blue-green flame and forms TeO2, or Tellurium dioxide. Tellurium is normally in oxidation states IV and VI when in compounds. It typically forms tellurate and tellurite compounds but with other metals it forms tellurides. To purify Tellurium vacuum distillation and zone melting processes are required. In 1783, Franz Joseph Müller von Reichenstein noticed an ore near a mine in Zlatna, Romania. The ore had a metallic shine to it and was originally thought to be Antimony or Bismuth that were native to the area. After initial investigations showed that there was no trace of Bismuth or Antimony, the ore was actually gold telluride or AuTe2. Müller researched the unknown ore for three years and published his proof that a new element was present in a journal that was overlooked. Müller decided in 1796 to send his discovery to Berlin for Martin Klaproth to examine. Klaproth was able to prove Müller’s findings by producing a sample that was pure and decided on the name Tellurium. Klaproth named Tellurium after the Latin word “tellus” which means Earth. This was not the first time Klaproth had seen this element. In 1789, Paul Kitaibel from Hungary had discovered it by himself and sent it to Klaproth for testing. Tellurium is teratogenic and very toxic therefore it has no real or known biological role.
When an element is teratogenic it disturbs the process of how a fetus or embryo develops. It is known that workers who come in contact with small doses of the element through the air obtain “Tellurium breath” which as a result develops an odor similar to garlic. The main use of Tellurium is to enhance the machinability of alloys like copper and stainless steel. It can also be used with semiconductors involving copper, gold, silver, and tin. If you add Tellurium to lead it can increase its hardness and strength as well as improve its resiliency to acids. Tellurium also has applications in oil refining, solar cells, CDs and DVDs, tinting ceramics and glass, as well as improving the qualities of rubber. If the world was to run out of tellurium a replacement would need to be found quickly due to the uses of it. Tellurium is used to make thin, cheap solar panels. Without another alternative the price of solar panels would increase due to the cost of more expensive materials. But new processes have allowed for photovoltaic cells and circuit boards can be recycled and broken down for …show more content…
tellurium. Sometimes you can find Tellurium free out in nature making up 0.0000001 percent of the Earth’s crust, but more it is easier found in minerals like sylvanite (silver-gold telluride) and calaverite (gold telluride).
Tellurium can also by obtained commercially through the process of electrolytic copper refining. The cost of pure Tellurium is twenty-four dollars per one hundred grams compared to the cost of unpurified Tellurium at forty-four cents per one hundred grams. Of all of the Tellurium available to the world about ninety percent of it is found as a byproduct of copper. The rest is found in small deposits of bismuth, gold, and silver. The amount of telluride ores found can be large on these deposits, but is only cost effective to mine when bismuth, gold, and silver are also recovered. There are rumors that in China that there is a large deposit of Tellurium, but upon investigation into the mine it was determined that it was bismuth telluride ore. It is estimated that the amount of Tellurium that can be recovered in a year can be as much as 3,200 tons. While actual reports of the recovered amount is near twenty-five to fifty percent of 3,200 tons. Meaning that 1,600 tons could possibly be the most Tellurium we can recover and produce in a year from a 1997 study done by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL). Tellurium in its natural appearance is a combination of eight isotopes: 130Te (33.8%), 128Te (31.7%), 126Te (19.0%), 125Te (7.1%), 124 (4.8%), 123Te (0.9%), 122Te (2.6%), 120Te (0.1%). The abundancy of Tellurium on the Earth’s crust by weight is one part per billion while it is abundant two tenths per billion by moles. Scientists know of 33 isotopes of Tellurium with mass numbers ranging from 106 to 138. Tellurium is an important element in everyday lives. It is one of sixty elements used in a cell phone. A shortage of this rare metalloid would impact the world with our technology and expenses. While tellurium can be toxic and harmful to humans, it is also vital to our world and the way it runs.
In March of 1768, in present-day Ohio, Tecumseh was born. Tecumseh's name means "Panther in the sky." Tecumseh was the fifth born in his family. His mom, Methotaske, was a Creek, and his dad, Puckeshinewa, was a Shawnee. He excelled at the game's Indian boys played. He also organized other boys to go on hunts. When Tecumseh was younger he admired and looked up to the warriors, like his older brother. He also tried to be like the warriors. Later in his life, Tecumseh became a powerful chief to the Native American Tribe, the Shawnee's. He did not want the Americans to take the Native American's land. He accomplished many things in his life.
In 1925, an epidemic of diphtheria had intruded the small town of Nome, Alaska, and other surrounding villages. During the time there was no way of getting to the small town by ship because the large ice pack intruding the waters and the two planes in Alaska at the time had already been dismantled and had put away for the winter. Alaskan officials had to quickly devise a plan that would save the people affected by the epidemic, many mostly children. They had devised a plan to run sled dog teams from checkpoint to checkpoint handing off the serum to the next musher in line. There were 20 different mushers and around 150 dogs that had took part of this feat. This feat later to be known was the Serum Run of 1925 or the Great Race of Mercy.
Uranium has multiple isotopes, the most common isotope is uranium-238, and with uranium-235 being the most popular, but less abundant. Surprisingly, uranium is not necessary for the sustainability of life, and is not chemically toxic (Cox, ...
at worst, we would get about 2 million years of power from it. Thorium is
Mining for elements that could be used as a nuclear power were very important in the Cold War. New technology and research for nuclear material was an essential part in building a nuclear weapon. The most important element for making nuclear weapons is uranium. Uranium is used to make plutonium, a very powerful element, by deuteron bombardment of uranium oxide. Uranium, a gray-colored element, is mined from the common uranium ores. Common isotopes, such as, radioactive sulfur (S35), radioactive carbon (C14), radioactive phosphorus (P32) and strontium (Sr90) were a great safety hazard towards the environment and mammals. The amount of time it takes for half the radioactive isotope to disintegrate is called half-life. "Isotopes with a short half-life, measured in seconds, hours, or days, are considered generally less dangerous to the envioronment2." Isotopes with a high half-life are very harmful to our world; for example, plutonium in one of its forms (Pu239) has a half-life of over 20,000 years. There is so much heat given off that, in power reactors, the heat is used to generate electricity. These nuclear elements, mainly plutonium, was used to make the most destructive weapons ever to be built: nuclear missiles.
If you are trying to remove toxins from your body, then you should consider doing a Teatox, which is also known as a tea detox. There are many ways that you can benefit from doing a Teatox. Below is a list of reasons that you should try a Teatox:
Technetium is a silver-gray radioactive element and it is located in the D-block with an atomic number of 43. Most of the Tc-99 is produced synthetically, where natural occurrences of the element are rarely formed by fission in uranium in the crust of the earth. Tc-99 is the most common isotope with a radioactive half-life of 212,000 years and it can mainly be found in nuclear reactors.
Beryllium is a naturally occurring element, it’s found in rocks and soil, especially in beryl and bertrandite rock. It was discovered by a chemist named Vaquelin in 1798. It is the fourth element of the periodic table. The purified beryllium is a grey, extremely lightweight and hard metal, it is a good conductor of electricity and heat, and is non-magnetic. (Studios, 2017) [7] Beryllium is used in high-technology products, such as aerospace components, transistors, nuclear reactors, and golf clubs. ("Beryllium health and environment", 2017) [1] Emerald is an exquisite form of beryllium mineral having traces of chromium that add a green hue to the stone. ("Beryllium", 2017) [2]
The Periodic Table of Elements is commonly used today when studying elements. This table’s history begins in ancient times when Greek scientists first started discovering different elements. Over the years, many different forms of the periodic table have been made which set the basis for the modern table we use today. This table includes over 100 elements and are arranged by groups and periods. Groups being vertical columns and periods being horizontal columns. With all of the research conducted over the years and the organization of this table, it is easy to use when needed.
There are many elements in the world and one of them is cobalt. It is a silvery blue metal with a blue coat. It is element number twenty-seven on the table, which means that it has twenty-seven protons and electrons. One mole or its atomic weight is 58.9 grams. It has a relatively high melting and boiling point, the melting point being 1,495 degrees Celsius or 2,723 Fahrenheit and the boiling point being 2,927 degrees Celsius or 5,301 Fahrenheit. The top three countries that mine this element are the District Republic of the Congo, Cuba, and Australia in that order. Cobalt has had and still has many uses in the world today. This element’s uses include alloys, electronics, chemicals, agriculture, and health industries. It is used in all of these industries in many ways. (Cobalt Periodic)
Although Bismuth is mined in countries all over the world, including Peru, Japan, Mexico, and Canada, Bolivia is the world’s primary supplier of Bismuth. Bismuth only naturally occurs twice as much as gold in the Earth’s crust, but it is also a byproduct of smelting and refining many metals including gold, silver, lead, copper, and tin. Many compounds contain traces of Bismuth, such as bismuth subsalicylate, found in medical antacids such as Pepto-Bismol. Bismuth germinate is a scintillator, which emits light in response to gamma ray exposure, and is therefore highly valued in physics experiments. Other examples of compounds containing Bismuth include bismanol, a Bismuth-Magnesium combination used to create permanent magnets, used by the US Naval Surface Weapons Center, and bismuth telluride, a semiconductor and thermoelectric compound used in refrigerators. Bismuth is also a common component of makeup, paint, bullets, and alloys in detection systems and fire extinguishers. With all of these uses, it may come as a surprise that Bismuth is a radioactive material. Fortunately, the half-life of bismuth is 1.9×1019 (19,000,000,000,000,000,000) years
U-235, an isotope of Uranium, can be used in a fission bomb due to the fact that when its nucleus splits it gives off additional neutrons which may hit other uranium nuclei, causing them to split. This then creates a chain reaction and is why only small masses of uranium are required to release substantial amounts of energy (Bitesize, 2017). The most infamous example of how uranium has been used in this way, is the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima (Atomic Heritage Foundation, n.d.). The same properties that allow uranium to be used in a bomb, are valued in the world of nuclear energy. Nuclear power stations use energy from uranium to produce electricity and this production accounts for approximately 11 percent of the world’s electricity (Environmental protection Agency, 2016). Such uses are the main drivers for uranium exports and support the uranium industry in Australia, influencing social, economic and political aspects of
Technetium can exist in a large number of oxidation states such as Tc, Tc(III), Tc(IV), Tc(V), Tc(VI) and Tc(VII). It is produced in large amounts during the nuclear fission reaction of U235 and during production and testing of nuclear weapons (Yoshihara 1996). Technetium can precipitate out from the solution by oxidation as well as reduction reactions. During oxidation of Tc(III) and Tc(IV), hydrolysis reaction takes place which gives out precipitates of Technetium from the solution.
Amongst the numerous benefits of uranium mining, production of uranium from mining has a significant impact on sustainable global energy production. As seen in the table (Figure 3) extracted from the World Nuclear Association’s report on the benefits of using uranium as a primary source of obtaining electricity, Uranium generates the highest capacity of energy per kilogram when combusted, proving to be the most exothermic. Hence, being the most viable supply of energy in comparison to other fossil fuels, uranium mining has the potential to becoming a preeminent source of electricity in future.
These elements are poisonous and are hard to clean from the environment because it is non-biodegradable.