Tantalum

Tantalum represented by the atomic number 73 and chemical symbol Ta is a heavy, and very hard metal. It has the appearance of grayish silver. In its pure form tantalum is ductile and can be drawn into fine wire for use as a filament for evaporating metals like aluminum. Tantalum shows excellent resistance towards chemical attack and is totally immune to chemical attack at temperatures below the 150¢XC mark. Tantalum is prone only to attacks by HCL acid, acidic solutions containing the fluoride ion, and free sulphur trioxide. Tantalum's has a high melting point which is exceeded only by tungsten and rhenium.

Processing of Tantalum Till very recent times the majority of the world¡¦s production of Tantalum was got from the discard slags of tin smelters. The tin mineral known as cassiterite is most frequently associated with columbite/ tantalite ore. This is found in countries like Thailand, Australia, Brazil and also in Malaysia in a a small extent. As the tin concentrates are smelted, the tin gets transformed to metal, but the tantalum stays unreduced in the slag, from which it is then recovered by the process of electric smelting and/or chemical extraction. These days Tantalum along with Niobium are getting extracted from their ores after concentration, by chemical means in place of smelting.