Del Rios Lost Element Appears in Sweden

Greater quantities were needed for further investigation. The new element s likeness to chromium made Sefstrom beheve that vanadium should be oxidized more easily than iron and thus be enriched in the slag during the carbon elimination process for cast iron. And exactly so From the slag large quantities of the new metal could be obtained. 

Cast iron produced in a blast furnace has a high carbon content and is brittle and not forgeable. At this time, the first part of the 19 century, the carbon elimination process was of the Walloon foiling type during which oxidation 

In 1830 Sefstrom wrote about the investigation of the slag in Transactions of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences  

The slag is first ground as fine as possible. Grains of metallic iron are oxidized with nitric acid. .. Three parts of slag is then mixed with two parts of saltpeter and 1 part of soda. The mixture is heated in crucible of cast iron during 4 hours at a temperature as high as possible without melting of the crucible. The mass is then pulverized, covered with water and boiled, preferably in a silver vessel. 

Ammonium vanadate, a white crystalline powder, is precipitated from the alkaline water solution, and now in quantities large enough for further investigations of the goddess Vanadis metal 

---