Zircon is a co-product or by-product of the mining and processing of heavy-mineral sands for the titanium minerals, ilmenite and rutile, or from tin minerals. Zirconium and hafnium are contained in zircon at a ratio of about 50 to 1, and they are quite difficult to separate chemically. It is extracted either as a dark sooty powder, or as a gray metallic crystalline substance. The principal economic source of zirconium is the zirconium silicate mineral, zircon (ZrSiO 4), which is found in deposits located in Australia, South Africa and the United States, as reported by the British Geological Survey. Zirconium is never found in nature as a native metal. It was later superseded by the Kroll process. The crystal bar process (or Iodide process), discovered by Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer in 1925, was the first industrial process for the commercial production of pure metallic zirconium. Pure zirconium wasn't prepared until 1914. The impure metal was isolated first by Berzelius by heating a mixture of potassium and potassium-zirconium fluoride in a small decomposition process conducted in an iron tube. He named the new element Zirkonertz (zirconia). The mineral was not known to contain a new element until Klaproth analyzed a jargon from the island of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. The zirconium-containing mineral zircon, or its variations (jargon, hyacinth, jacinth, or ligure), were mentioned in biblical writings. Zirconium (from Syriac zargono, Arabic zarkûn from Persian zargûn زرگون meaning 'gold like') was discovered in 1789 by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, and it was isolated in 1824 by Jöns Jakob Berzelius. The oxidation state of zirconium is usually +4, although +3 and +2 can also be obtained inside of chemical compounds. (It is much more difficult to ignite the solid metal.) The Zirconium-zinc alloy becomes magnetic at temperatures below 35 K. When it is finely divided into a powder, zirconium can spontaneously ignite in air, especially at high temperatures.

Zirconium is lighter than steel and its hardness is similar to copper. Zirconium is a grayish-white metal, lustrous, and quite corrosion-resistant. Zirconium is primarily used in nuclear reactors, especially in the cladding of the fuel rods, due to its low neutron-capture cross-section and its resistance to corrosion. A lustrous, very corrosion resistant, gray-white, strong transition metal that resembles titanium, zirconium is obtained mainly from the mineral zircon. Zirconium ( pronounced /zɚˈkoʊniəm/, /ˌzɝˈkoʊniəm/) is a chemical element that has the symbol Zr and has the atomic number 40.

Periodic table chemistry zr