Minerals gadolinite

From gadolinite, a mineral named for Gadolin, a Finnish chemist. The rare earth metal is obtained from the mineral gadolinite. Gadolinia, the oxide of gadolinium, was separated by Marignac in 1880 and Lecoq de Boisbaudran independently isolated it from Mosander s yttria in 1886. 

Lars Frederik Nilson (1840-1899) found the element predicted by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) as "eka-boron" in the mineral gadolinite. 

Gadolinium - the atomic number is 64 and the chemical symbol is Gd. The name derives from the mineral gadolinite, in which it was found, and which had been named for the Finnish rare earth chemist Johan Gadolin . It was discovered by the Swiss chemist Jean-Charles Galissard de Marignac in 1886, who produced a white oxide he called Y in a samarskite mineral. In 1886, the French chemist Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran gave the name gadolinium to Y . 

ORIGIN OF NAME Named for the mineral gadolinite, which was named for the French chemist Johann Gadolin. 

A stone quarry near the town of Ytterby in Sweden produces a large number of rare-earth elements. Carl Gustaf Mosander (1797-1858) discovered several rare-earths, including the rare-earth mineral gadolinite in this quarry in 1843. He was able to separate gadolinite into three separate, but closely related, rare-earth minerals that he named yttria (which was colorless), erbia (yellow color), and terbia (rose-colored). From these minerals, Mosander identified two new rare-earth elements, terbium and erbium. The terbia that was found was really a compound of terbium terbium oxide (Tb O )... 

Carl Gustaf Mosander, a Swedish chemist, successfully separated two rare-earths from a sample of lanthanum found in the mineral gadolinite. He then tried the same procedure with the rare-earth yttria. He was successful in separating this rare-earth into three separate rare-earths with similar names yttia, erbia, and terbia. For the next 50 years scientists confused these three elements because of their similar names and very similar chemical and physical properties. Erbia and terbia were switched around, and for some time the two rare-earths were mixed up. The confusion was settled ostensibly in 1877 when the chemistry profession had the final say in the matter. However, they also got it wrong. What we know today as erbium was originally terbium, and terbium was erbium. 

Rhenium was the last naturally occurring chemical element to be discovered in 1925 by Noddack, Tacke, and Berg in the mineral gadolinite. The name of this extremely rare element (the estimated occurrence in the earth s crust is about 0.7 ppb ) is derived from the Rhine river. Residues from the processing of molybdenum ores represent the main source of the metal. 

Most of the rare earth elements were discovered in the mineral gadolinite, (Ce,La, Nd,Y)2FeBe2Si20io (Mindat.Org) from Ytterby. The town has given name to yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, and erbium. Other elements discovered here are gadolinium, holmium, thulium, scandium, lutetium, and tantalum (Source Mindat.org). 

Gd Gadolinium After the mineral gadolinite, in turn named after Johan Gadolin... 

It really proved to be so but the stranger was found in another mineral. It happened in 1803. J. Berzelius and W. Hisinger on the one hand and M. Klaproth on the other separated an oxide of a new element independently of one another and named it cerium after the recently discovered (1801) asteroid Geres the mineral was named cerite . For many years these two minerals, gadolinite and cerite, were the only sources of REEs. 

Two elements among the 92 have names that are connected with personal names, even if indirectly. The rare earth metal gadolinium got its name from the mineral gadolinite, and thus indirectly from the Finnish chemist Johan GadoHn. The Russian colonel and engineer E. Samarskii-Bykhovets discovered a mineral that was given the name samarskite. A rare earth metal found in this mineral was named samarium after the mineral. 

Figure 17.3 Rare earth metals - two genealogical trees with their roots in the minerals gadolinite and cerite.

Marignac in 1880 also examined the mineral samarskite. Fractional precipitation using potassium sulfate and oxalate gave two different elements. He thought that both were new. Soret analyzed both fractions spectroscopically. He observed that one element was samarium but the other was previously unknown. In 1886 Marignac named it gadolinium after the mineral gadolinite. 

Erbium — Ytterby, a town in Sweden), Er at. wt. 167.26(3) at. no. 68 m.p. 1529°C b.p. 2868°C sp. gr. 9.066 (25°C) valence 3, Erbium, one of the so-called rare-earth elements of the lanthanide series, is found in the minerals mentioned under dysprosium above. In 1842 Mosander separated yttria, found in the mineral gadolinite, into three fractions which he called yttria, erbia, and terbia. The names erbia and terbia became confused in this early period. After 1860, Mosander s terbia was known as erbia, and after 1877, the earlier known erbia... 

The treatment of xenotime parallels the H2SO4 treatment of monazite, while the minerals gadolinite, cerite and orthite are best attacked by the NaOH route. The more refractory complex minerals, such as fergusonite, loparite, euxenite and samarskite, are somewhat more difficult to deal with, and are generally processed for their niobium and/or tantalum values. 

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