You may know that steel, an alloy of iron and carbon, is synonymous with strength. Can it be stronger? Adding various elements to steel will have varying effects on the alloy. Vanadium, a silvery grey metal, increases the hardness of steel.
Vanadium is not usually found as a free element in nature. A wide variety of minerals in the Earth’s crust contain vanadium. Some minerals containing vanadium are vanadinite, carnotite, and magnetite. The majority of vanadium is procured from magnetite. It is in South Africa, Russia, and China that most of the vanadium is mined.
The majority of vanadium used in industry is as an alloying element to add strength to steel. Vanadium steel is usually used in the manufacture of materials that need to be strong but light-weight, such as automobile parts.
The element was first isolated by Sir Henry E. Roscoe, an English chemist, in 1867. However, the element was given the name by Nils Sefstrom, a Swedish chemist. Vanadium gets its name from the Scandinavian goddess of beauty, ‘Vanadis’. Its atomic number is 23, and the symbol is V.
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