Georg Brandt discovered cobalt in 1739 while attempting to prove that the blue color in glass came from an unknown element, not bismuth as previously thought. Cobalt is a hard, silvery-gray metal that is resistant to corrosion and oxygen. It has many uses including in superalloys for jet engines, magnets, batteries, colorants like blue glass, and medical radiation therapy using radioactive cobalt-60. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the leading producer of cobalt today.

1. Samantha Johnson

2. What’s in a name?
 Named and discovered by Swedish
Scientist Georg Brandt in 1739
 The blue color given to glass was previously
attributed to Bismuth. Brandt was trying to prove
that it was due to a different element, which was
discovered to be Cobalt.
 The name cobalt derives from the German
word “kobald”, which means evil spirit or
goblin and the Greek word “cobalos”, which
means mine.
 Difficult to mine and adverse health implications

3. General Properties
 Atomic Number: 27
 Atomic Weight: 58.933200 g
 State at Room Temperature: Solid
 Appearance: Silver-gray metal
 Melting Point: 2723 ˚F, 1495 ˚C, 1768 K
 Boiling Point: 5198˚F, 2870˚C, 3143 K
 Density: 8.9 grams per cubic centimeter

4. Isotopes
One main isotope—Cobalt-60
○ Most radioactive form of cobalt
○ Most exposure from medical tests and
treatment
○ Produced from weapons testing
○ Cancer radiotherapy
○ Irradiate (sterilization) of food—controversial
topic as to safety of this process
○ Sterilize medical instruments
○ Test welds and casting industrially

5. Compounds Containing Cobalt
 Combined with…
 Salts—carbonate, sulfate, nitrate, acetate (catalysts)
 Oxide, hydroxide, carbonate (dyes)
 Component of Alnico along with aluminum and nickel
 Magnetic Compounds (mainly composed of Iron and
Cobalt)
○ Permendur 49
○ Permendur 24
○ Rotelloy 3
○ AFK 524
○ Alcomax and Columax (iron, aluminum, nickel, and
copper)

6. Key Functional Properties
 Resistant to oxygen
 Resistant to corrosion and damage
 Hard
 Produces blue color in salts
 Ductile
 Ferromagnetic

7. Common Uses
 Very broad window of uses
 Deep blue color of glass, ceramics, pottery, enamel, tile,
porcelain
 Wear resistant coatings
 Formation of alloys
○ Permanent magnets
 Alnico
○ Forms Stellite—high temperature, high speed cutting tools
○ Jet engines
○ Magnetic Steels
○ Stainless Steels
 Forms part of Vitamin B 12
 Radiation Therapy (Cobalt-60)
 Batteries

8. Proportionality of Use
Market Percentage Common Use
Superalloy 19.0% Jet engines
Hardfacing and Other 6.0% Protective
Alloys
Magnets 7.0% Magnetic Steel
Hard Materials 13.0% Diamond Tooling
Catalysts 9.0% Salts (carbonate,
sulfate…)
Color 10.0% (Glass, Enamel, Plastic,
Tiling, Fabric)
Feedstuffs, Recording 4.0 Mainly Carbonate
Media, Electrolysis
Batteries 27.0 Rechargeable batteries—
portable devices
Adhesives, Soaps, Driers 5.0 Paints and inks
In other words…most people encounter at least one use of Cobalt on a
daily basis!

9. Supply and Demand
 Mainly imported
 Naturally occurring in fairly small
amounts
 By-product of other metals—nickel and
copper
 ~ 55% from nickel industry
 ~ 35% from copper industry
 ~ 10% from primary cobalt operations

10. Where it’s found and refined
 Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia,
Australia, Brazil, Cuba, Russia, China
Source Percentage
Africa ~52%
Americas ~17%
Australia ~24%
Asia ~7%

11. Cost
 2 forms are sold: HG—minimum 99.8%
cobalt and LG—minimum 99.3% cobalt
 Similar trends are seen in the price of
the two
 99.80% tends to cost more
 Average 2010 Values
○ 99.8% (HG) = $20.56/lb
○ 99.3% (LG) = $18.74/lb

12. Pricing Trends
 Pricing spiked at the same time for both

13. Bibliography
 A conglomerate of the information on the following websites
was used:
 http://www.mii.org/Minerals/photocobalt.html
 http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele027.html
 http://www.chemicool.com/elements/cobalt.html
 http://chemistry.about.com/od/elementfacts/a/cobalt.htm
 http://len7288.hubpages.com/hub/Uses-of-Cobalt-in-Medicine-
and-Industrial-Manufacturing
 http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele027.html
 http://www.thecdi.com/cdi/images/documents/facts/COBALT_FA
CTS-Properties_and_Main_Uses.pdf
 http://www.metalprices.com/freesite/metals/co/co.asp
 http://www.thecdi.com/cobaltfacts.php
 http://www.evs.anl.gov/pub/doc/Cobalt.pdf
 http://www.epa.gov/superfund/health/contaminants/radiation/pdf
s/cobalt.pdf