Mantle, incandescent preparation

Use Incandescent gas mantles, spectrography, preparation of cerium metal, polymerization catalyst. 

Cerium(lll) chloride is used to prepare cerium metal and other cerium salts. It also is used as a catalyst in olefin polymerization, and in incandescent gas mantles. 

Uses. — Pure metallic cerium has no commercial uses, but its alloys are both interesting and capable of wide application. The most important of these is the alloy called misch metal, mixed metal, commercial cerium, or simply cerium, It is essentially a mixture of cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and praseodymium, but as usually prepared it contains from 1-5 per cent iron and very small amounts of other elements. The most abundant constituent is cerium, which sometimes runs as high as 70 per cent or more, though generally it is about half of the mixture. The alloy is produced from the rare earth residues of monazite sand. This mineral is used in large quantities for the manufacture of incandescent gas mantles (see Thorium Uses), which usually contain 99 per cent thoria and 1 per cent ceria. The composition of various monazites is shown in Table XXVI. 

That the rare earth metals are of little practical value was the general view during the whole of the 19 century. The turn of the century, however, saw the first major application, Auer von Welsbach s incandescent mantle for gas lightning (section 17.4.10.2). Gradually the list of RE applications was increased. At first the RE metals were used mixed, just as they were prepared from monazite sand. One example is mischmetall, consisting of about 50% cerium, 25% lanthanum and 25% other rare... 

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