Contact Vanitec
Tel: +44 (0)1959 563400
Fax: +44 (0)1959 562563
E-mail: info@vanitec.org
Vanitec Limited,
Winterton House, High Street, Westerham, Kent TN16 1AQ, England
Reg No. 06490949
What is Vanadium?
Vanadium is a metal which was discovered by the Swedish scientist Sefstrom in 1831. He named it after Vanadis the Swedish Goddess of Beauty and Fertility because of the attractive brilliant colours of the chemical compounds in which it was first found. It was well named for it has provided material for the brilliant thoughts of the fertile minds of scientists and technologists who, for over 150 years, have developed and continue to develop new materials for the benefit of humanity.
Who found it?
Sefstrom in his painstaking study at the laboratories of the Eckersholm iron works which obtained iron ore from the Taberg iron mountain at Falun in Sweden, separated vanadium from chromium and uranium with which it had been confused. He must have considered the automobile a fiction of the imagination, flying a dream, and space travel a fantasy.
Yet his discovery, which preceded Bessemer's process for making steel by nearly twenty years and the first production of alloy steel by Mushet by over thirty years, was essential for the development of alloy steels and titanium alloys with their remarkable properties. Without these steels and titanium alloys it would not have been possible for man to design machines which enable him to drive across the earth, fly in the sky and travel into space.
Other pioneers in the isolation and use of vanadium were J. Berzelius, in Sweden, Sir Henry Roscoe and Professor Arnold in the UK.
An early user of vanadium was Henry Ford in his Model T who specially highlighted the use of vanadium-containing steels as imparting twice the strength for half the weight.