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Published in Anthony Peter Gordon Shaw, Thermitic Thermodynamics, 2020
Scandium resembles magnesium and aluminum in some ways and would probably be used as a pyrotechnic fuel if it were less scarce and expensive. Scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides are the so-called “rare earth elements.” Unlike the name suggests, not all of these elements are rare, and some of them are not especially expensive. Lanthanum and cerium are much less expensive than scandium is. Cerium and lanthanum are major components of the pyrophoric ferrocerium alloy “flints” found in some cigarette lighters. Rare earth oxides are quite stable because the rare earth metals are rather oxophilic. Therefore, high temperatures should be produced when these metals burn in the presence of oxygen. Thorium and uranium, the most common actinides, should behave similarly. Much like zirconium, hafnium, and several other metals, finely powdered samples of thorium and uranium are known to be pyrophoric. Unfortunately, all of the actinides are radioactive. Some of the adiabatic properties of the Sc/O2, Ce/O2, Th/O2, and U/O2 systems are listed in Table 5.10.
The Meandering Life of a Research Trajectory: Rare Earths in the Aubervilliers Research Centre (1953–2020)
Published in Ambix, 2021
This factory had a de facto monopoly on numerous rare earth products in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. It used monazite, a typical rare earth ore, to extract thorium and rare earth elements to manufacture ferrocerium (for lighter stones), cerium oxides (for paints and varnishes), mesothorium (a substitute for radium coming from uranium ores), as well as mischmetal (a rare earth alloy). The important place of thorium in the company's portfolio should not be surprising. Thorium is often present in the same ores as rare earths, and it is one of the elements (another being, e.g. zirconium) whose history is deeply intertwined with the history of rare earth elements.