22 Facts About Beryllium

Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4.

Beryllium is a steel gray and hard metal that is brittle at room temperature and has a close-packed hexagonal crystal structure.

Beryllium has a concentration of 2 to 6 parts per million in the Earth's crust.

Beryllium is found in over 100 minerals, but most are uncommon to rare.

Beryllium is most commonly extracted from the mineral beryl, which is either sintered using an extraction agent or melted into a soluble mixture.

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Beryllium hydroxide is precipitated from a solution of sodium fluoroberyllate and sodium hydroxide in water.

Beryllium oxide, BeO, is a white refractory solid, which has the wurtzite crystal structure and a thermal conductivity as high as some metals.

Beryllium nitride, Be3N2 is a high-melting-point compound which is readily hydrolyzed.

Beryllium carbide, Be2C, is a refractory brick-red compound that reacts with water to give methane.

Beryllium production saw a rapid increase during World War II, due to the rising demand for hard beryllium-copper alloys and phosphors for fluorescent lights.

Beryllium powder was itself studied as a rocket fuel, but this use has never materialized.

Beryllium alloys are used in many applications because of their combination of elasticity, high electrical conductivity and thermal conductivity, high strength and hardness, nonmagnetic properties, as well as good corrosion and fatigue resistance.

Beryllium was used for cantilevers in high performance phonograph cartridge styli, where its extreme stiffness and low density allowed for tracking weights to be reduced to 1 gram, yet still track high frequency passages with minimal distortion.

Beryllium is commonly used in some neutron sources in laboratory devices in which relatively few neutrons are needed .

Beryllium is used at the Joint European Torus nuclear-fusion research laboratory, and it will be used in the more advanced ITER to condition the components which face the plasma.

Beryllium has been proposed as a cladding material for nuclear fuel rods, because of its good combination of mechanical, chemical, and nuclear properties.

Beryllium fluoride is one of the constituent salts of the eutectic salt mixture FLiBe, which is used as a solvent, moderator and coolant in many hypothetical molten salt reactor designs, including the liquid fluoride thorium reactor .

Beryllium oxide is useful for many applications that require the combined properties of an electrical insulator and an excellent heat conductor, with high strength and hardness, and a very high melting point.

Beryllium oxide is frequently used as an insulator base plate in high-power transistors in radio frequency transmitters for telecommunications.

Beryllium oxide is being studied for use in increasing the thermal conductivity of uranium dioxide nuclear fuel pellets.

Beryllium compounds were used in fluorescent lighting tubes, but this use was discontinued because of the disease berylliosis which developed in the workers who were making the tubes.

Beryllium is chemically similar to magnesium and therefore can displace it from enzymes, which causes them to malfunction.