Word: cobalt
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...coming laboratory now has a hot spot where radioactive material is handled with gingerly precaution. Hottest spot of this sort in any non-Government lab is the bottom of a water-filled tank at California's Stanford Research Institute, where a rod and four nesting cylinders of radioactive cobalt glow with a weird blue light. Together they weigh only 10 Ibs. and they cost only $22,500, but they give off as much radiation (4,500 curies) as $80 million worth of radium. If their shielding water were to leak away, they would give a man a fatal dose...
Another strategic metal which has been in great shortage is cobalt, vital for hardening jet engines to resist intense heat. Last week the ingenuity of U.S. industry promised to boost the supply of cobalt 40% by 1953. Source of the promise: a new chemical refining process developed by American Cyanamid Co., fourth biggest U.S. chemical company...
While the U.S. has deposits of cobalt ore, much of it is low-grade and expensive to recover. As a result, 90% of the cobalt consumed by the U.S. (more than 8,200,000 Ibs. a year) comes from Africa, which has abundant supplies. Cyanamid's process, developed by its Chemical Construction Corp. subsidiary, will enable the U.S. to utilize its own low-grade ores more cheaply, and produce pure cobalt from them at a much faster rate. For example, Howe Sound Co., for which "Chemico" is building a new $2,500,000 Utah plant to utilize the process...
...only does Chemico's process promise to boost the output of cobalt, but Engineer Roberts says it works equally well with other low-grade ores such as nickel, copper and manganese (but not as yet with iron ores). Moreover, by reducing the amount formerly lost in slag, he says it can increase the pure metal recovered from scrap as much as 15% for copper, 70% for zinc. He predicted it could eventually cut the production costs of cobalt up to 80%, copper and nickel as much...
Just before World War II, scientists found that the sheep disease was caused by lack of cobalt in the soil. When minute amounts of a cobalt compound were added to the sheep's salt, the mysterious disease disappeared...