The Netherlands: Resources at a GlanceOfficial name: Kingdom of the Netherlands Government: Constitutional monarchy Capital city: Amsterdam Area: 16,041 mi2; 41,543 km2 Population 2009 e
Trang 1The Netherlands: Resources at a Glance
Official name: Kingdom of the Netherlands Government: Constitutional monarchy Capital city: Amsterdam
Area: 16,041 mi2; 41,543 km2
Population (2009 est.): 16,715,999 Languages: Dutch and Frisian Monetary unit: euro (EUR)
Economic summary:
GDP composition by sector (2008 est.): agriculture, 1.7%; industry, 25.5%; services, 72.9%
Natural resources: natural gas, petroleum, peat, limestone, salt, sand and gravel, arable land
Land use (2005): arable land, 21.96%; permanent crops, 0.77%; other, 77.27%
Industries: agroindustries, metal and engineering products, electrical machinery and equipment, chemicals,
petroleum, construction, microelectronics, fishing
Agricultural products: grains, potatoes, sugar beets, fruits, vegetables, flowers, livestock
Exports (2008 est.): $533.2 billion
Commodities exported: machinery and equipment, chemicals, fuels, foodstuffs
Imports (2008 est.): $475.9 billion
Commodities imported: machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, fuels, foodstuffs, clothing
Labor force (2008 est.): 7.715 million
Labor force by occupation (2005 est.): agriculture, 2%; industry, 18%; services, 80%
Energy resources:
Electricity production (2007): 105.2 billion kWh
Electricity consumption (2007): 122.8 billion kWh
Electricity exports (2007): 5.48 billion kWh
Electricity imports (2007): 23.09 billion kWh
Natural gas production (2007 est.): 76.33 billion m3
Natural gas consumption (2007 est.): 46.42 billion m3
Natural gas exports (2007 est.): 55.66 billion m3
Natural gas imports (2007 est.): 25.73 billion m3
Natural gas proved reserves ( Jan 2008 est.): 1.416 trillion m3
Oil production (2007 est.): 88,950 bbl/day Oil imports (2005): 2.648 million bbl/day Oil proved reserves ( Jan 2008 est.): 100 million bbl
Source: Data from The World Factbook 2009 Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2009.
Notes: Data are the most recent tracked by the CIA Values are given in U.S dollars Abbreviations: bbl/day = barrels per day;
GDP = gross domestic product; km 2 = square kilometers; kWh = kilowatt-hours; m 3 = cubic meters; mi 2 = square miles.
Amsterdam
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium France
United
Kingdom
N o r t h
S e a
Trang 2the effects on the country’s economy needed to be
considered before completely opening the market
The Netherlands was the second highest producer
of natural gas in the European Union and seventh in
the world in 2007 It was also fifth in the world in
natu-ral gas exports The country’s proven resources of
nat-ural gas are twenty-second overall (1,416,000 million
cubic meters), which is 0.8 percent of the world total
The United States ranks second worldwide in
produc-tion and first in import and consumpproduc-tion of natural
gas Russia is the largest producer and contains the
largest proven resources of natural gas in the world
At the 2009 rate of consumption, use of natural gas in
the Netherlands will surpass production by 2020 or
2025 Some gas will remain in the fields, but less
pres-sure will make extraction of the gas more difficult
Peat
Smallingerland, a region in northern Netherlands,
and its capital city, Drachten, have long histories with
the peat industry The name Drachten is believed to
be derived from darch, the Old Frisian word for peaty
soil In 1641, a businessman hired eight hundred
workers to dig peat, creating the Drachtstervaart
Ca-nal The canal spurred several other industries in the
area, including shipbuilding At that time, peat was a
main source of fuel, and the demand was more than
the Friesland area could produce Local farmers made
a deal with businessmen from Holland province to sell
peat Hundreds of people began spending their days
cutting peat, for little profit Slowly, the community
began to grow with the construction of homes,
hos-tels, businesses, and other accommodations needed
to handle the peat workers and industry
The Netherlands is third globally in peat
exporta-tion, accounting for more than $84 million in 2007 It
contains 75 percent of all the peat settlements in
northwestern Europe Peat production in the
Nether-lands started to decline near the beginning of the
twenty-first century This was partly due to the fact
that peat, like coal, is a limited resource The
Nether-lands government is working to better preserve the
peatlands In 1974, the Dutch government began its
efforts to protect, conserve, and restore peatlands
The five-step plan was to span a fifty-year time period
After cataloging all of the remaining peatlands in the
country, the government purchased them Step three
mandated stopping the drainage of the land and
re-storing its hydrology Extensive plans to manage the
reserves were developed, followed by a campaign to
educate the public about the peatlands and their importance Through this program, the Dutch gov-ernment purchased 8,000 hectares of peatland The government also opened the Veenpark, a museum de-signed to educate the public about the history of peat workers The museum includes a farmhouse, church, bakery, and other buildings that visitors can explore Another problem facing the country is subsidence
In order to have more land for farming, many peat grasslands have been drained, causing the fields to sink 1 to 2 meters farther below sea level than before The peat becomes oxidized when in contact with the air, drying, crumbling, and decaying, which causes the topsoil to sink Scientists estimate that under cur-rent conditions, the central “green heart” region of the Netherlands will continue to sink between 2 and
25 millimeters annually In order to preserve the peat and elevation above sea level, the amount of ground-water cannot be decreased
Flowers The Netherlands is the third largest exporter in the world of agricultural products, following the United States and France Agricultural exports account for
$55 billion of the Netherlands’ income each year It exports two-thirds of the fresh-cut plants, flowers, and bulbs sold throughout the world Every year, the Neth-erlands produces nine billion flower bulbs Three bil-lion of those are tulip bulbs, of which approximately two billion are exported Over one-half of the coun-try’s flower-bulb farms, 9,481 hectares, are planted with tulips Other popular bulbs include lilies, gladi-oli, narcissi, and hyacinths
The tulip arrived in Holland in 1593 with the ar-rival of botanist Charles de L’Écluse (also known as Carolus Clusius) He had taken a position at the Uni-versity of Leiden as its head botanist for the botanical garden The tulips L’Écluse brought with him were gifts from an ambassador from Constantinople whom
he had met while living in Vienna He planted his tu-lip collection behind a building at the university The flowers were popular, but L’Écluse refused to give away or sell any of the bulbs It is believed that the Dutch tulip industry started when thieves stole some
of L’Écluse’s flowers from his garden Through the seventeenth century tulips spread in the area between the North Sea and Amsterdam This region is now
known as the bollenstreek, or bulb-growing district The
town of Lisse is at the center of this district and hosts
a world-famous flower exhibition
Trang 3Tulips were not always readily available as they are
today The years between 1634 and 1637 are known as
“the foolish tulip trade,” “the wild tulip speculation,”
and “Tulipomania.” In 1634, tulip bulbs were sold by
weight instead of per bulb Bulbs were weighed in
grain (4 to 8 centigrams), which is also used by
gold-smiths In 1636, tulips were seen as a symbol of status
and wealth Bulbs were bought at high costs, and sold
at even higher prices At the peak, some tulips sold for
the same amount as a large home along the canals in
Amsterdam Tulips also became the subject of many
paintings by famous artists In 1637, the Dutch
gov-ernment passed a law against such excessive tulip
prices That year, the tulip market crashed, an event
that has been compared to the American stock
mar-ket crash of 1929
A second bulb district developed in the North
Hol-land province during World War I In 1925, the Dutch
created the International Flower Bulb Center to assist
gardeners around the world with growing bulb
flow-ers At the end of World War II a large expansion of flower bulb cultivation occurred
Limestone Limestone quarries are found throughout the world Several of the largest are found in the Netherlands and Belgium, spanning more than 100 kilometers Mount Saint Peter, near St Pietersberg in the Nether-lands, is covered with massive limestone quarries The Netherlands also has several underground limestone caves The city of Valkenburg is famous for its caves, which have been used for centuries The walls contain ancient charcoal drawings and other art-work The caverns were used during World War II as a shelter for refugees Public tours are given of a por-tion of the more than 70 kilometers of caves and pas-sageways beneath Valkenburg In the Limburg region
of Holland and Belgium, there are more than three hundred room and pillar limestone mines, some as large as 85 hectares In the Maastricht region,
exten-A windmill in Zaanse Schans Wind power has been utilized in the Netherlands for centuries (©exten-Alexshalamov/Dreamstime.com)
Trang 4sive mining of limestone has resulted in both local
and large-scale collapses These collapses have caused
faulting, surface subsidence, and the formation of
sinkholes
The quarry near the village of Winterswijk is a
source of Mesozoic limestone from the Muschelkalk
period Students, scientists, and the general public
search the quarry for fossils on weekends and over the
summer They search for fossils of ancient reptiles
that date back 240 million years Fossils of imprints of
claws of the Rhynchosauroides peabodyi are common in
the quarry No bone fossils of the coastal reptile have
been found, only claw prints and skin These trace
fos-sils can be helpful to scientists, telling them the
ani-mal’s weight and speed In 2006, the Dutch Geologic
Society found a trace sequence in the Winterswijk
quarry that was more than 10 meters long Scientists
search for trace fossils by splitting the limestone into very thin sheets, about 0.5 centimeter in thickness Fossilized fish scales and bones, seashells, and reptile bones have also been found in the quarry
Salt The collection of peat in the eighth and ninth centu-ries caused the land to sink and fill with salt water By the eleventh century, this peat was heavily concen-trated with salt, so it was used for salt making instead
of fuel It was only possible to collect this peat during low tide The peat was dried and then burned The ashes were taken to salt sheds, where they were placed
in large drums full of salt water, which was used to increase the amount of salt collected The water was then evaporated away During medieval times, eel-grass was also used in salt making in the northwestern
The Erasmus Bridge links the southern and northern parts of Rotterdam, one of the busiest ports in the world (©Bob Bouwman/
Dreamstime.com)
Trang 5regions of Holland Salt was an important
preserva-tive for fish, bacon, other meats, and butter at the time
In some ways, the Netherlands owes its
indepen-dence to salt During its revolution against Spain, it
blockaded the Iberian saltworks, effectively
bankrupt-ing Spain The Netherlands began minbankrupt-ing and
pro-ducing salt in 1918 Halite, or rock salt, deposits exist
throughout the world, left behind after the
evapora-tion of ancient lakes Halite can be mined the same
way as other rocks, or it can be dissolved with water
underground The saltwater solution is then brought
to the surface, where the salt can be removed This
method is more cost-effective The salt is then
puri-fied, removing the magnesium, calcium, and any other
unwanted elements Most of the world’s salt is
pro-duced for food storage or consumption; more than
8 percent is used in other industries Salt is used in
the production of pulp and paper, the dyeing of
fab-rics, and soapmaking The Netherlands ranks among
the top dozen nations in overall salt production,
accru-ing more than $780 million from exportaccru-ing salt in
2007 China and the United States top the list,
ac-counting for more than one-third of the world’s
pro-duction in 2008
Arable Land
The term “arable land” is defined as land that can be
used to grow crops Land is deemed nonarable if it is
too rocky, too cold or hot, too dry, too mountainous,
too rainy or snowy, or too polluted An average of
more than 200,000 square kilometers of arable land
is lost each year It is possible however, to turn
non-arable land (sometimes referred to as wasteland) into
arable land The process depends on why the land is
nonarable Some of the processes are planting trees
indeserts to create shade, digging irrigation ditches,
using fertilizers, creating hills to shelter areas from
high winds, and constructing greenhouses for areas
with harsh climates or little sunlight These processes
are often huge undertakings that cost large amounts
of money
In 2005, the Netherlands was ranked forty-seventh
in the world by percentage of arable land used for
ag-riculture (21.96 percent) Bangladesh was first with
more than 55 percent Much of the Netherlands has
been reclaimed from the North Sea by draining water
and building dikes and levees Less than 5 percent of
Dutch citizens work in agricultural jobs The Dutch
work hard to maintain the quality of their arable
farm-land
Other Resources The Netherlands ranks fifty-second in oil production
in the world In 2007, it produced 88,950 barrels of oil per day The Shell gasoline company, officially the Royal Dutch Shell plc, was created in 1907 after Dutch and British gas companies merged Jean Baptiste Au-gust Kessler and Henri W A Deterding founded the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company in 1890
The Netherlands produces an annual average of 5,000 metric tons of industrial sand and gravel In
2007, the country was fourteenth worldwide in ex-ports of stone, sand, and gravel, amounting to almost
$100 million
The Netherlands also produces and exports a large number of vegetables It exports one-quarter of the world’s tomatoes and one-third of all peppers and cu-cumbers During the 1990’s, Dutch tomato farmers were struggling to sell their produce German con-sumers stopped buying the tomatoes, claiming that they lacked flavor and tasted industrially mass-pro-duced European shoppers had begun choosing to-matoes imported from the Mediterranean instead, along with French cheese, cucumbers from Greece, and Danish bacon, instead of those produced in the Netherlands One drawback to Holland tomatoes is that they are grown in large greenhouses, instead of outdoors
Jennifer L Campbell
Further Reading
Bedford, Neal The Netherlands 3d ed Oakland, Calif.:
Lonely Planet, 2007
Blom, J C H., and Emiel Lamberts History of the Low Countries New ed New York: Berghahn Books,
2006
Cech, Thomas V Principles of Water Resources: History, Development, Management, and Policy 2d ed New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 2005
Ciriacono, Salvatore Building on Water: Venice, Hol-land, and the Construction of the European Landscape
in Modern Times New York: Berghahn Books, 2006 Dash, Mike Tulipomania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinar y Passions It Aroused London: Phoenix, 2003.
De Vries, Jan, and A M van der Woude The First Mod-ern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press, 1997
Grattan, Thomas Colley Holland: The History of the Netherlands New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007.
Trang 6Wesseler, Justus, Hans-Peter Weikard, and Robert
Weaver, eds Risk and Uncertainty in Environmental
and Natural Resource Economics Northampton,
Mass.: Edward Elgar, 2004
Whited, Tamara Northern Europe: An Environmental
History Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
See also: Agricultural products; Agriculture
indus-try; Limestone; Oil and natural gas distribution; Peat;
Salt
Nickel
Category: Mineral and other nonliving resources
Where Found
Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, has the largest exploited
nickel ore deposit in the world Other major ore
de-posits include those in Norway, New Caledonia, Cuba,
northwestern Siberia, and the Kola Peninsula
Primary Uses
Nickel is widely used in stainless steel and other alloys
as well as in plating, catalytic processes, and batteries
Stainless steel is commonly about 8 percent nickel
Nickel alloys are also used in marine hardware,
mag-nets, coinage, and tableware In 2008, the apparent
consumption of primary nickel in the United States
was about 127,000 metric tons, while world
produc-tion was about 1.6 million metric tons
Technical Definition
Nickel (symbol Ni) is a shiny metal with a density
of 8.9 grams per cubic centimeter (slightly greater
than that of iron) Nickel melts at 1,455° Celsius and
boils at 2,920° Celsius Along with iron and cobalt,
it constitutes the iron group triad in the periodic
ta-ble—traditionally Group VIII, now Group 10 Nickel
(atomic number 28) has five stable isotopes and an
atomic weight of 58.71 It is malleable and ductile,
and it resists corrosion in air
Description, Distribution, and Forms
Nickel occurs in detectable amounts in the Earth’s
crust, the atmosphere, and the seas Earth’s core is
thought to contain nickel and iron, and some
meteor-ites do The average crustal concentration is about
100 micrograms per gram, which ranks twenty-second
among the elements Rural air may contain as much
as 10 nanograms per cubic meter, and urban air ten times as much Average nickel content in seawater is 0.1-0.6 microgram per liter, and there are about 4 mi-crograms per liter in groundwater
Elemental nickel occurs in meteorites, marine nodules, and the metallic core of the Earth Ores of nickel include oxides, sulfides, arsenides, and sili-cates, which often also contain copper The largest commercially exploited nickel ore deposit is in Sud-bury, Ontario, Canada The ore there is a complex sul-fide called pentlandite, which contains in addition to nickel a number of other metals, including iron and platinum group elements Approximately 30 percent
of the world’s known reserves of nickel are in Sud-bury Major ore deposits also occur in the western Si-berian arctic and the Kola Peninsula in Russia Silicate ores such as garnierite (a nickel-magnesium silicate) are mined in Australia, Cuba, Indonesia, and New Caledonia The major producers of nickel are Russia, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, and New Caldonia In
1998, the United States stopped producing primary nickel From 1999 to 2007, the United States im-ported an average of 150,000 metric tons a year A large body of ore has been discovered in Labrador, making it likely that Canada will continue to be a ma-jor producer for many years
Elemental nickel moves through the environment via water-soluble compounds such as nickel chloride
or sulfate, through particulate matter, and possibly through the formation of volatile tetracarbonyl nickel
In the biosphere, nickel is found to a greater extent in plants than in animals Many plants are harmed by ab-sorbing nickel from the soil, but some 150 species have been found to hyperaccumulate, resulting in nickel contents up to 25 percent of dry weight Mosses and sponges are among the organisms that accumu-late nickel
Four types of nickel-containing enzymes have been identified: urease, hydrogenase, methyl coenzyme M methylreductase (MCR), and carbon monoxide de-hydrogenase (also called acetyl coenzyme A synthase) Urease, which catalyzes the breakdown of urea into ammonia, is found in plants, bacteria, algae, lichens, fungi, and certain invertebrates Urease from the jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis) was the first enzyme to
be obtained in crystalline form (by James Batcheller Sumner in 1926) but was not known to contain nickel until 1975 The other nickel enzymes are found mainly
in bacteria For example, MCR occurs in
Trang 7methano-genic bacteria that flourish in the bodies of termites.
These insects release enormous amounts of
meth-ane (a greenhouse gas) as a result of the bacteria
Bacterial carbon monoxide dehydrogenase catalyzes
the conversion of carbon monoxide to carbon
diox-ide and is responsible for removing about 100 metric tons per year of carbon monoxide from the atmo-sphere
There is evidence from animal studies that nickel may be an essential trace element in rats and pigs,
20,100 211,000 92,600 88,400 276,000 38,000 20,000 6,530 28,600
Metric Tons of Nickel Content
5,000,000 4,000,000
3,000,000 2,000,000
1,000,000 Zimbabwe
Russia Philippines
New Caledonia
Indonesia
Greece
South Africa
Venezuela
Other countries
180,000 36,000
4,500,000
250,000 85,000 74,900 77,000 47,000
Dominican Republic
China Canada
Brazil Botswana
Australia
Colombia
Cuba
Nickel: World Mine Production, 2008
Trang 8which fail to show normal weight gain if nickel is
rigor-ously excluded from the diet Similarly, many plants
suffer a distortion of their nitrogen metabolism if
de-prived of nickel On the other hand, toxic and even
carcinogenic effects can result from particular types
and levels of nickel exposure In rats the LD50 (lethal
dose for 50 percent of the test subjects) for orally
administered nickel (II) acetate is 350 milligrams per
kilogram
The average 70-kilogram human being carries a
burden of 0.5 milligram of nickel, which is
concen-trated in the hair and nails Dietary intake is 100-200
micrograms per day, with elimination largely through
the urine and perspiration Oils and fats, meat,
sea-food, and cereals all contain traces of nickel
Individ-uals who suffer myocardial infarction, stroke, or
ex-tensive thermal burns of the skin exhibit elevated
levels of nickel in the blood Skin contact with nickel
or nickel compounds can produce dermatitis; the
im-mune system becomes involved, and once sensitized,
a person reacts to very small exposures There is also a
long and melancholy history of lung lesions and
can-cer in miners who breathed dust containing nickel
sulfide Nickel-containing dust and smoke badly
pol-luted the area around Sudbury, at one time, causing
widespread blighting of all types of
vegetation
History
The European history of nickel
be-gan with Saxon miners who
encoun-tered an ore of nickel they thought
contained copper and derisively
named kupfernickel, or “devil’s
cop-per.” In 1751, Axel Fredrik
Cron-stedt investigated a sample of ore
from a mine in Hälsingland, Sweden
and concluded that it contained a
new element, which he obtained in
impure form In 1754, he named the
element Torbern Olaf Bergman
ob-tained a sample of the pure metal in
1775 The first nickel smelter began
operating in Sweden in 1838 and was
followed by others in Norway and
elsewhere in Europe One early
mo-tivation for nickel production was
the desire to produce nickel-silver
al-loy from local resources instead of
importing it from China The nickel
reserves in New Caledonia were noted by Jules Gar-nier, who helped establish a French nickel indus-try and later served as a consultant in Ontario, Can-ada, after the Sudbury nickel deposits started to be exploited in 1888 The founder of the nickel indus-try in the United States was Joseph Wharton, whose smelter in Camden, New Jersey, at one time in the nineteenth century produced one-sixth of the world’s nickel
In Britain the nickel carbonyl process was devel-oped in the late nineteenth century by Ludwig Mond and soon became commercially important
Obtaining Nickel Only nickel—not copper or the other metals in nickel ores—reacts with carbon monoxide, yielding volatile tetracarbonyl nickel This substance, after separation
by distillation, yields pure nickel upon heating to 180° Celsius
Uses of Nickel Nickel finds its most important uses in stainless steel and other alloys, in plating, and in catalysts Valued for its resistance to rusting, stainless steel exists in a multitude of types and compositions, but it is most
Source:Data from the U.S Geological Survey,Mineral Commodity Summaries, 2009 U.S Government Printing Office, 2009.
Transportation 30%
Chemicals 15%
Electical equipment 10%
Construction 9%
Fabricated metal products 8%
Appliances 8%
Petroleum industry 7%
Machinery 6%
Other 7%
U.S End Uses of Nickel
Trang 9typically 18 percent chromium, 8 percent nickel, and
the rest iron Nickel-copper alloys such as Monel (68
percent nickel) possess corrosion resistance toward
chlorine compounds and salt and are used in marine
hardware Nichrome (60 percent nickel, 40 percent
chromium) is used for heating elements in resistance
heaters, while nickel silver (composed of nickel,
cop-per, and zinc) is used for coinage, jewelry, and
table-ware Powerful permanent magnets make use of a
steel alloy called alnico (aluminum, nickel, cobalt)
Nickel plating is important for protecting steel from
corrosion and for steel’s appearance Rechargeable
batteries for portable equipment such as radios,
cord-less telephones, and flashlights are often nickel
cad-mium cells, while nickel hydride cells have been used
in computers and electric vehicles Thomas Edison
developed a battery using hydrated nickel oxide as an
electrode coating, and in the late twentieth century, a
nickel chloride-sodium battery was developed One
growing use is in nickel-metal hydride (NiMH)
bat-teries for hybrid vehicles, despite competition from
lithium-ion batteries Nickel-based batteries have also
experienced higher demand with the growth of the
wind-power industry
Nickel in finely divided form accelerates the
reac-tions of hydrogen gas with various substrates Thus
nickel catalysts are used in the hydrogenation of
vege-table oils and in “methanation”—the conversion of
carbon monoxide to hydrocarbons Nickel carbonyl
derivatives and cyclooctadiene-nickel complexes are
homogeneous catalysts for oligomerization of dienes
and acetylenes Small amounts of nickel oxide are
used to impart a green color to glass
Because nickel alloys are vital in aircraft engines
and armor plate, nickel was considered a strategic
resource and was stockpiled by the U.S government
In 1999, however, the U.S government sold off the
nickel in the National Defense Stockpile As of 2009,
the U.S Department of Energy continued to hold
several thousand tons of nickel ingot and scrap, some
of which was contaminated with low levels of
radioac-tivity; several more thousand tons of nickel were
ex-pected to be recovered from decomissioned defense
sites
World production of nickel in 2008 continued at a
fairly high level, despite a global economic downturn,
and was used mainly in steel production,
construc-tion, food processing, and transportation China was
the world’s largest consumer of the metal
John R Phillips
Further Reading
Adriano, Domy C “Nickel.” In Trace Elements in Terres-trial Environments: Biogeochemistry, Bioavailability, and Risks of Metals 2d ed New York: Springer, 2001.
Greenwood, N N., and A Earnshaw “Nickel,
Palla-dium, and Platinum.” In Chemistry of the Elements 2d
ed Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997
Hausinger, Robert P Biochemistry of Nickel New York:
Plenum Press, 1993
Howard-White, F B Nickel: An Historical Review
To-ronto: Longmans Canada, 1963
Lippard, Stephen J., and Jeremy M Berg Principles of Bioinorganic Chemistry Mill Valley, Calif.: University
Science Books, 1994
Sigel, Astrid, Helmut Sigel, and Roland K O Sigel,
eds Nickel and Its Surprising Impact in Nature.
Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2007
Silva, J J R Fraústo da, and R J P Williams “Nickel
and Cobalt: Remnants of Life?” In The Biological Chemistry of the Elements: The Inorganic Chemistry of Life 2d ed New York: Oxford University Press,
2001
Web Sites Natural Resources Canada Canadian Minerals Yearbook, Mineral and Metal Commodity Reviews
http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/mms-smm/busi-indu/cmy-amc/com-eng.htm
U.S Geological Survey Nickel: Statistics and Information http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/
commodity/nickel See also: Alloys; Canada; Cobalt; Indonesia; Iron; Magnetic materials; Mining safety and health issues; Russia; Steel; Strategic resources
Niobium
Category: Mineral and other nonliving resources
Where Found Niobium is most often found as niobium pentoxide in the mineral niobite (also called columbite or tanta-lite), which in the United States is found in Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, North Carolina, South Dakota,
Trang 10and Virginia This mineral is also found
in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Madagascar,
South Africa, the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, Nigeria, Norway, and Russia
Primary Uses
Niobium is used to toughen and harden
steel It is also used to make low- and
high-temperature superconductors In its
Min-eral Commodity Summaries (January, 2009),
the U.S Geological Survey reported that
approximately 78 percent of U.S end use
of niobium is in manufacturing of steels,
with the remaining 22 percent devoted to
production of superalloys
Technical Definition
Niobium (symbol Nb), or columbium
(symbol Cb), has an atomic number of 41, an atomic
weight of 92.9064, and sixteen isotopes It is a hard,
lustrous metal, gray or silver-white in color, malleable
(capable of being bent or flattened), and ductile
(ca-pable of being stretched) It has a melting point of
2,468° Celsius, a boiling point of 4,742° Celsius, and a
specific gravity of 8.4
Description, Distribution, and Forms
Niobium is named for Niobe, the mythical daughter
of the Greek god Tantalus The designation niobium
was officially adopted by the International Union of
Pure and Applied Chemistry in 1949 However, an
al-ternative name, columbium, is still used by many
met-allurgists in the United States and, to a lesser degree,
England
History
Niobium was discovered by the English chemist
Charles Hatchett in 1801, and it was first prepared in
1864 when Christian Wilhelm Blomstrand of Sweden
isolated it from niobium chloride by reduction in a
stream of hydrogen Niobium is easily welded and
re-sists tarnish It exhibits a variable valency of +2, +3, +5,
and possibly +4 At high temperatures, it reacts with
oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, fluorine,
bromine, iodine, and other nonmetals
Obtaining Niobium
Niobite forms in pegmatite (exceptionally
coarse-grained igneous rocks typically made of granite),
of-ten with tin and tungsof-ten minerals Ores of niobium
are also sometimes found in placer deposits Niobium
is rarely found without a similar element called tanta-lum Eighty-five percent of all niobium reserves are lo-cated in Brazil The element niobium is extracted from niobite by reducing the complex alkali fluoride with sodium, or the oxide with calcium, aluminum, or hydrogen
Uses of Niobium Because niobium has excellent gas-absorbing qualities and a high melting point, it is used in the manufacture
of vacuum tubes Niobium is used as an alloying agent
in carbon and alloy steels In the preparation of stain-less steel, it is used to prevent corrosion at high tem-peratures and to permit fabrication without added heat treatment Niobium adds strength, toughness, and ductility to chrome steel Niobium alloys are used
in jet and rocket engines In the form of a carbide, ni-obium is used in making cutting tools Combined with selenium and hydrogen, it forms a low-temperature superconductor (a material that can conduct electric-ity without any resistance), which is used in the con-struction of superconducting magnets Applications include monorail trains, where the tracks are made of superconductor material and the trains are magne-tized and glide along without any resistance It is also combined with other elements to form high-tempera-ture superconductors Since niobium allows neutrons
to pass through it without interference, it is used in nuclear reactors, particularly in the walls of experi-mental fusion reactors
Alvin K Benson
A columbite sample from South Dakota Columbite is another name for niobite, from which niobium is derived (USGS)