A new study published in Geology evaluates the potential for cobalt extraction from the Idaho Cobalt Belt (ICB) of east-central Idaho, using a detailed study of the Iron Creek deposit. The ICB hosts the second-largest known ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 6, 2023
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4
Northwestern University engineers have developed a new sponge that can remove metals—including toxic heavy metals like lead and critical metals like cobalt—from contaminated water, leaving safe, drinkable water behind.
Nanomaterials
May 11, 2023
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75
Researchers have successfully split seawater without pre-treatment to produce green hydrogen.
Materials Science
Feb 1, 2023
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26
Transition metals and non-ferrous metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt are not only suitable as materials in engineering and technology, but also for a wide range of applications in electrochemistry and catalysis.
Analytical Chemistry
Oct 3, 2022
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4
Just when we thought alkenes could only react with alcohol to yield ethers in the presence of strong acids, hydroalkoxylation may not be quite what we expected. Organic Chemistry 101 will never be the same again, but the ...
Materials Science
Aug 4, 2022
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6
Waste heat is a promising source of energy conservation and reuse, by means of converting this heat into electricity—a process called thermoelectric conversion. Commercially available thermoelectric conversion devices are ...
Analytical Chemistry
Jul 11, 2022
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327
The result of a geophysical survey in a remote part of eastern Idaho could have economic impacts on the Gem State by identifying locations to extract cobalt and other minerals.
Earth Sciences
Sep 23, 2021
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14
As a rule, most catalyst materials deteriorate during repeated catalytic cycles—they age. But there are also compounds that increase their performance over the course of catalysis. One example is the mineral erythrite, ...
Materials Science
Aug 9, 2021
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64
Catalysts are crucial to making industrial processes viable. However, many of the non-precious metal catalysts used for synthesis have low activity, are difficult to handle, and/or require harsh reaction conditions. Osaka ...
Materials Science
Apr 8, 2021
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28
A sustainable, powerful micro-supercapacitor may be on the horizon, thanks to an international collaboration of researchers from Penn State and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Until now, the ...
Materials Science
Mar 16, 2021
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1601
Cobalt ( /ˈkoʊbɒlt/ or /ˈkoʊbɔːlt/) is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal.
Cobalt-based blue pigments have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass, but the color was later thought by alchemists to be due to the known metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue-pigment producing minerals; they were named because they were poor in known metals and gave poisonous arsenic-containing fumes upon smelting. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), and this was ultimately named for the kobold.
Nowadays, some cobalt is produced specifically from various metallic-lustered ores, for example cobaltite (CoAsS), but the main source of the element is as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia yields most of the cobalt metal mined worldwide.
Cobalt is used in the preparation of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. Cobalt silicate and cobalt(II) aluminate (CoAl2O4, cobalt blue) give a distinctive deep blue color to glass, smalt, ceramics, inks, paints and varnishes. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one stable isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is a commercially important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer and in the production of gamma rays.
Cobalt is the active center of coenzymes called cobalamin or vitamin B12, and is an essential trace element for all animals. Cobalt is also an active nutrient for bacteria, algae and fungi.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
