Discovery of the transition metals

The most abundant transition metal in Earth’s solid crust is iron, which is fourth among all elements and second (to aluminum) among metals in crustal abundance. The elements titanium, manganese, zirconium, vanadium, and chromium also have abundances in excess of 100 grams (3.5 ounces) per ton. Some of the most important and useful transition metals have very low crustal abundances—e.g., tungsten, platinum, gold, and silver.

Four of the regular transition metals were known to the ancients: iron (ferrum), copper (cuprum), silver (argentum), and gold (aurum). Their chemical symbols (Fe, Cu, Ag, Au), in fact, are derived from their alchemical (Latin) names rather than their contemporary names. The other regular transition metals were discovered (or recognized as elements) after the early 18th century. The transition metal most recently discovered in nature is rhenium (atomic number 75), which in 1925 was detected in platinum ores and in the niobium mineral columbite.

Technetium (atomic number 43) is the only d-block element that has not been isolated from Earth’s crust. All isotopes of technetium are radioactive; the half-life of even the stablest isotope, technetium-97, is too short to permit the survival of primordial technetium in Earth’s crust, and claims that it has been isolated or detected there must be considered erroneous. Technetium can be isolated in considerable quantities, however, from the fission products of nuclear reactors, and it is at least as readily available for chemical study as the naturally occurring similar element rhenium, of which there are no concentrated ores.

Transition-metal catalysts

One important use of transition metals and their compounds is as catalysts for a variety of industrial processes, mostly in the petroleum and polymer (plastics, fibres) industries, in which organic molecules are isomerized, built up from simple molecules, oxidized, hydrogenated, or caused to polymerize. Only a few of the most important such processes and their catalysts can be mentioned here. Catalysts are of two physical types: homogeneous (i.e., dissolved in the reaction mixture) and heterogeneous (i.e., constituting a solid phase separate from and insoluble in the reaction mixture). Both types are represented on the industrial scene, but the latter are much more common.

The introduction of catalysts that allow polymerization to be carried out at relatively low temperatures and pressures revolutionized the production of polyethylene and polypropylene. Previously polyethylene had to be made by a process requiring pressures of about 1,000 atmospheres, and polypropylene of useful properties was not commercially important. The catalysts devised and applied during the early 1950s are prepared from titanium tetrachloride and an aluminum alkyl such as triethylaluminum: the precipitated, titanium-containing solid, plus the excess aluminum alkyl in solution, constitutes the catalyst. A very different sort of catalyst, consisting of chromium trioxide dispersed on silica-alumina, performs similarly in polymerizing ethylene but cannot produce a useful form of polypropylene.

Chromium in the form of chromium sesquioxide, or chromic oxide, on alumina is the major industrial catalyst for transforming saturated hydrocarbons (i.e., those in which all available valence bonds of the atoms are attached to other atoms) to useful olefins (unsaturated organic compounds), chiefly n-butane to butylene and butadiene.

Iron-containing catalysts are used in various processes of which the most notable is that for producing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. This process, developed early in the 20th century, represents the first major industrial application of transition metal catalysis. The catalyst is magnetic triiron tetroxide (Fe₃O₄), “promoted” by the addition of small quantities of potassium oxide, aluminum oxide, calcium oxide, and silica.

Molybdenum in molybdenum trioxide–aluminum oxide mixtures or in cobalt oxide–molybdenum trioxide–aluminum oxide mixtures finds many applications, such as desulfurizing gases and liquids; removing lead, nickel, and vanadium from petroleum refinery feed stocks; and in modifying, or “reforming,” crude petroleum fractions to increase their octane rating.

Olefins that are free of such impurities as carbon monoxide, sulfur, halogen, and compounds of arsenic or lead (catalyst poisons), can be hydrogenated (i.e., combined with hydrogen) at atmospheric pressure and room temperature, using various types of active nickel preparations as catalysts.

Copper is a component of a variety of catalysts, of which the copper chromites, used for selective hydrogenation of carbonyl groups (compounds containing the organic radical C = O), are perhaps the most important. Fats and oils can also be hydrogenated to alcohols using copper catalysts. Palladium chloride together with salts of copper in the +1 oxidation state forms a homogeneous catalyst for oxidizing ethylene to acetaldehyde (Wacker process), but commercial use of this process has been abandoned. Metallic platinum has a broad spectrum of catalytic activities. One of the most important in terms of tonnage production is in catalytic reforming of petroleum fractions to improve antiknock quality of gasoline. Silver oxide, on an inactive, refractory support, catalyzes oxidation of ethylene to ethylene oxide.

The oxo process (also called hydroformylation), in which certain olefins react with carbon monoxide and hydrogen to give aldehydes (a class of organic compounds that contain the group ―CHO), requires a homogeneous catalyst containing a transition metal. The first practicable one was hydrogen tetracarbonylcobaltate, HCo(CO)₄, which is formed in the reaction mixture by action of hydrogen on octacarbonyldicobalt, Co₂(CO)₈. More recently rhodium complexes have been found to have greater activity at lower temperatures and pressures and to be more easily recovered. The net reaction in the oxo process is represented by