Lanthanum, abundance

There are fewer analyses of REE in alabandite, and these show less variability. Alabandite shows LREE-depleted patterns, with lanthanum abundances of — 0.1 X Cl and lutetium abundances of 10 X Cl (Wheelock et al, 1994). 

The masses of the naturally occurring isotopes for lanthanum and cerium are shown. For lanthanum, the isotope at 138 is only present in 0.09% natural abundance and is isobaric with Ce. For this reason the isotope La is used to measure the amount of lanthanum. Similarly, Ce and Ce are present in low abundance "Ce is present in greatest abundance and is used to measure the amount of cerium. Another isotope of cerium, C, although quite abundant, is isobaric with Nd and is therefore not used for measurement. 

Lanthanides is the name given collectively to the fifteen elements, also called the elements, ranging from lanthanum. La, atomic number 57, to lutetium, Lu, atomic number 71. The rare earths comprise lanthanides, yttrium, Y, atomic number 39, and scandium. Sc, atomic number 21. The most abundant member of the rare earths is cerium, Ce, atomic number 58 (see Ceriumand cerium compounds). 

Cerium ranks ca 25th in abundance in the earth s cmst (3), and cerium, which occurs at 60 ppm cmstal abundance, not lanthanum at 30 ppm, is the most abundant lanthanide. 

Some rare earth compounds are used in glassmaking. Cerium is the most abundant, and its compounds are used to polish glass. Lanthanum compounds are used in making glass lenses, and praseodymium compounds color glass green. 

ISOTOPES There are 49 isotopes of lanthanum. One, La-139, Is stable and makes up 99.910% of the known amount found on Earth. Another Isotope has such a long half-life that Is considered stable with a half-life of 1.05x10+ years, La-138 makes up just 0.090% of the known abundance on Earth. All the other Isotopes are radioactive and have half-lives ranging from 150 nanoseconds to several thousand years. 

Lanthanum is the fourth most abundant of the rare-earths found on the Earth. Its abundance is 18 ppm of the Earth s crust, making it the 29th most abundant element on Earth. Its abundance is about equal to the abundance of zinc, lead, and nickel, so it is not really rare. Because the chemical and physical properties of the elements of the lanthanide series are so similar, they are quite difficult to separate. Therefore, some of them are often used together as an alloy or in compounds. 

Fig. 5.5. Decomposition of Solar System abundances into r and s processes. Once an isotopic abundance table has been established for the Solar System, the nuclei are then very carefully separated into two groups those produced by the r process and those produced by the s process. Isotope by isotope, the nuclei are sorted into their respective categories. In order to determine the relative contributions of the two processes to solar abundances, the s component is first extracted, being the more easily identified. Indeed, the product of the neutron capture cross-section with the abundance is approximately constant for aU the elements in this class. The figure shows that europium, iridium and thorium come essentially from the r process, unlike strontium, zirconium, lanthanum and cerium, which originate mainly from the s process. Other elements have more mixed origins. (From Sneden 2001.)... 

The element was discovered by Klaproth in 1803 and also in the same year by Berzelius and Hisinger. It is named after the asteroid Ceres. Cerium is found in several minerals often associated with thorium and lanthanum. Some important minerals are monazite, aUanite, cerite, bastnasite, and samarskite. It is the most abundant element among aU rare-earth metals. Its abundance in the earth s crust is estimated to be 66 mg/kg, while its concentration in sea water is approximately 0.0012 microgram/L. 

As reported by Olmez and Gordon (University of Maryland), the concentration pattern of rare earth elements on fine airborne particles (less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) is distorted from the crustal abundance pattern in areas influenced by emissions from oil-fired plants and refineries. The ratio of lanthanum (La) to samarium (Sm) is often greater than 20 (crustal ratio is less than 6). The unusual pattern apparently results from tlie distribution of rare earths in zeolite catalysts used in refining oil. Oil industry emissions have been found to perturb the rare earth pattern even in very remote locations, such as the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. 

Fig. 1. Dry lake mineral bed near Mountain Pass, California contains over one million pounds of neodymium and nearly one-half million pounds of praseodymium, bo til elements once regarded as rare earths" and of limited scientific curiosity. During recent years, die rare earths have become significant materials in the electronic, chemical, metallurgical, glass, cryogenic, nuclear, and ceramic refractory industries. Lanthanum, another rare-earth element, is more abundant than lead...

Under the same conditions, in contrast to what is observed for calix[4]arene-bearing CMPO moieties, with CPil2, distribution ratios of lanthanides increase from the lightest lanthanide, lanthanum, to europium. Americium can be easily separated from the lightest lanthanides (separation factor DAm/La > 20, DAm/Ce =15, /lAlll,Nd = 10, UAi /si = 7.5, DAm/Eu = 6), which are the most abundant lanthanides in fission-product solution. Cavitands bearing picolinamide (Cv5) or thiopicolin-amide (Cv6) residues seems much less selective than their calixarene counterparts, giving SAm/Eu < 2.18... 

Europium is a metallic element discovered in 1901 in Paris by the French scientist Eugene-Anatole Demarcay. It belongs to a series of elements called lanthanides, or 4f elements, extending from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (atomic number 71). These elements have low abundances Europium occurrence in Earth s crust is only 2.1 ppm (parts per million), that is, 2.1 grams (0.07 ounces) per metric ton, and in seawater, its concentration is as low as 4 X 10 8 ppm. 

The lanthanides (Ln) include lanthanum (La) and the following fourteen elements—Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb and Lu— in which the 4f orbitals are progressively filled. These fifteen elements together with scandium (Sc) and yttrium (Y) are termed the rare-earth metals. The designation of rare earths arises from the fact that these elements were first found in rare minerals and were isolated as oxides (called earths in the early literature). In fact, their occurrence in nature is quite abundant, especially in China, as reserves have been estimated to exceed 84 x 106 tons. In a broader sense, even the actinides (the 5f elements) are sometimes included in the rare-earth family. 

At the present time the technique of forming the volatile hydrides of certain elements (Ge, Sn, As, Sb, Bi, Se and Te), as a method of separation and rapid introduction of these elements into an atomiser (flame or hot tube), has had little impact in applied geochemistry. A few applications have been reported but are not yet widely used despite the very low detection limits which are obtainable. The main problems with the method are an abundance of interference effects, mainly from transition elements, and short linear calibration ranges. However Bedard and Kerbyson [4, 5] have shown that it is possible to separate in advance traces of As, Sb, Bi, Se and Te from pure copper, (the most serious interferer) by co-precipitating the elements on lanthanum hydroxide. It has further been shown that this precipitation method is applicable to the majority of interfering elements, and can be adapted to provide a rapid large batch method suitable for geochemical analysis of soil and sediment [6]. 

Chondritic relative abundances of strongly incompatible RLEs (lanthanum, niobium, tantalum, uranium, thorium) and their ratios to compatible RLEs in the Earth s mantle are more difficult to test. The smooth and complementary patterns of REEs in the continental crust and the residual depleted mantle are consistent with a bulk REE pattern that is flat, i.e., unfractionated when normalized to chondritic abundances. As mentioned earlier, the isotopic compositions of neodymium and hafnium are consistent with chondritic Sm/Nd and Lu/Hf ratios for bulk Earth. Most authors, however, assume that RLEs occur in chondritic relative abundances in the Earth s mantle. However, the uncertainties of RLE ratios in Cl-meteorites do exceed 10% in some cases (see Table 4) and the uncertainties of the corresponding ratios in the Earth are in same range (Jochum et ai, 1989 W eyer et ai, 2002). Minor differences (even in the percent range) in RLE ratios between the Earth and chondritic meteorites cannot be excluded, with the apparent exception of Sm/Nd and Lu/Hf ratios (Blicher-Toft and Albarede, 1997). 

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