What is Vanadium atom?

     

Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23.  It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal.  The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer(passivation) somewhat stabilizes the free metal against further oxidation.  

     Andres Manuel del Rio discovered compounds of vanadium in 1801 in Mexico by analyzing a new lead-bearing mineral he called "brown lead".  Though he initially presumed its qualities were due to the presence of a new element, he was later erroneously convinced by French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils that the element was just chromiun.  Then in 1830, Nils Gabriel Sefstrom generated chlorides of vandium, thus proving there was a new element and named it "Vanadium" after the scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility, Vandadis(Freyia). 

     Vanadium occurs naturally in about 65 minerals and in fossil fuel deposits.  It is produced in China and Russia from steel smelter slag.  Other countries produce it either from magnetite directly, 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, and some aluminium alloys.   The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid.  The vanadium redox battery for energy storage may be an important application in a the future.