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Scandium is a silvery metal that is soft and has a density of about three times that of water. Scandium is a transition metal and is also considered a rare earth element due to similar chemical properties (such as difficulty in extracting and in separating from other elements) and existence in the same ores, according to Chemicool.
Scandium is the 31st most abundant element on Earth, according to Periodic Table, with about 22 parts per million abundance by weight in Earth’s crust, according to Chemicool.
Scandium is scattered thinly and has been found in over 800 minerals. Within these minerals, scandium is found in its oxide form (Sc2O3, also known as scandia or scandium oxide), according to Scandium Mining. There are many commercial uses for scandium even though the cost of scandium is typically high – several thousand dollars per kilogram for scandium oxide and up to a few hundred thousand dollars per kilogram for pure Scandium Metal, according to Chemistry Explained.
History
Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table, predicted the existence and properties of scandium (which he called “ekaboron” — similar to boron) in 1869, according to the New World Encyclopedia. Lars Fredrick Nilson, a Swedish chemist, when examining the spectra of the minerals euxenite and gadolinite, discovered the element in 1879. The element was named for the Latin word for Scandinavia, “Scandia,” due to the minerals in which Scandium Oxide was at that time found to exist only in the Scandinavian Peninsula, according to Peter van der Krogt, a Dutch historian. Per Teodor Cleve, a Swedish chemist, made the link that the new element discovered by Nilson was the same as the proposed element described by Mendeleev.
In the first attempt to isolate scandium, Nilson and his team processed 10 kilograms of euxenite and were able to produce about two grams of scandium oxide. According to the New World Encyclopedia, metallic scandium wasn’t produced for the first time until 1937 by Werner Fischer, Karl Brünger, and Hans Grienseisen, German chemists. In 1960, 99 percent pure scandium was produced.
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