Yttrium is found in the
rare-earth mineral monazite
, of which it makes 2.5%, and in smaller quantities in other minerals such as barnasite, fergusonite and smarskite.
Is yttrium a pure substance?
For about fifty years, nothing new was learned about yttrium. Then Swedish chemist Carl Gustav Mosander (1797-1858) discovered that
yttrium was not a single pure substance
. Instead, it was a mixture of three new substances. In addition to Gadolin’s yttrium, Mosander found two more elements.
What is yttrium texture?
Yttrium is a
soft, silvery metal
.
Is yttrium harmful to humans?
Water soluble compounds of yttrium are
considered mildly toxic
, while its insoluble compounds are non-toxic. … Exposure to yttrium compounds in humans may cause lung disease.
What ore is yttrium found in?
Yttrium is present in nearly all rare-earth minerals. It is obtained by mining the minerals
bastnasite, fergusonite, monazite, samarskite and xenotime
, which are mined in the USA, China, Australia, India and Brazil.
What is an interesting fact about yttrium?
Yttrium: Yttrium is a
soft silver-metallic element
. Fun fact about Yttrium: Yttrium is named after the Swedish village of Ytterby, which has a nearby quarry containing quartz and feldspar, among other minerals. Chemical symbol: Y. Atomic number: 39.
Where is yttrium most commonly found?
Natural abundance
It is mined in
China and Malaysia
. Yttrium also occurs in the other ‘rare earth’ minerals, monazite and bastnaesite. Yttrium metal is produced by reducing yttrium fluoride with calcium metal.
Is yttrium a rare-earth element?
The rare earth elements (REE) are a set of seventeen metallic elements. These include the fifteen lanthanides on the periodic table plus scandium and yttrium.
What type of rock is yttrium?
Yttrium occurs especially in the heavy rare-earth ores, of which laterite clays, gadolinite, euxenite, and xenotime are the most important. In the
igneous rocks
of Earth’s crust, this element is more plentiful than any of the other rare-earth elements except cerium and is twice as abundant as lead.
What does yttrium cost?
Yttrium is currently worth
$3,400 per pound
, europium costs $20,000 per 100 grams and terbium sells for $1,800 per 100 grams. Dysprosium, the cheapest of the rare-earth elements discovered, only costs $450 per 100 grams.
What can destroy yttrium?
Water
reacts with yttrium and its compounds to create hydrogen gas and Y
2
O
3
. Concentrated nitric and hydrofluoric acids do not rapidly destroy yttrium, but other stronger acids do.
How is yttrium used in medicine?
In medicine, yttrium-based materials are used
in medical lasers and biomedical implants
. This is extended through the array of available yttrium isotopes to enable roles for
90
Y complexes as radiopharmaceuticals and
86
Y tracers for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.
How does yttrium affect the environment?
Yttrium will
gradually accumulate in soils and water soils
and this will eventually lead to increasing concentrations in humans, animals and soil particles. With water animals yttrium causes damage to cell membranes, which has several negative influences on reproduction and on the functions of the nervous system.
How common is yttrium?
Abundance. Yttrium is found in most rare-earth minerals, it is found in some uranium ores, but is never found in the Earth’s crust as a free element.
About 31 ppm of the Earth’s crust
is yttrium, making it the 28th most abundant element, 400 times more common than silver.
What does yttrium smell like?
If you were to smell yttrium, you wouldn’t smell anything!
It’s odorless
. Other properties of yttrium include: A melting point of 1522 degrees C, or 2772 degrees F, or 1795 K.
