A tantalising prospect
ALUMINIUM
was once more costly than gold. Napoleon III, emperor of France, reserved
cutlery made from it for his most favoured guests, and the Washington monument,
in America’s capital, was capped with it not because the builders were
cheapskates but because they wanted to show off. How times change. And in
aluminium’s case they changed because, in the late 1880s, Charles Hall and Paul
Héroult worked out how to separate the stuff from its oxide using electricity
rather than chemical reducing agents. Now, the founders of Metalysis, a small
British firm, hope to do much the same with tantalum, titanium and a host of
other recherché and expensive metallic elements including neodymium, tungsten
and vanadium.
