Other Mining Investments

Cobalt Futures and Cobalt Investments

The Cobalt market is hot. Cobalt prices have reached landmark numbers recently. Australian Mining Investments has reported that the new high grade copper cobalt discovery widens zone of mineralization at Rocklands Group Project near Cloncurry in North Queensland. A magnetic survey was carried out to the northwest of the grid and recorded a high magnetic zone over 400m wide near some old historical workings and a costean (trench) was excavated in a southwest/northeast direction for a length of 60m. The costeans identified a zone of high-grade Cu mineralization in the form of malachite and azurite. A shallow hole DORC 78 was drilled under the costean and intersected high grade Cu mineralization over a wide zone of 20m from 1 to 21m @ 2.28% Cu and .086% Co including 9m @ 3.82% Cu. The hole also intersected further 22m from 21 to 43m @ 0.8% Cu. Drill hole DORC 79 intersected 78m 2.31% Cu from 34 to 112m, including 17m @ 4.56% Cu. The drilling is expected to be completed over the next 14 days.

About Cobalt

Cobalt was known in ancient times through its compounds, which would color glass a rich blue.

Georg Brandt (1694-1768) is credited with the discovery of cobalt. The date of discovery varies depending on the source, but is between 1730 and 1737. He was able to show that cobalt was the source of the blue color in glasses, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt.

During the 19th century, cobalt blue was produced at the Norwegian Blaafarvevrket (70-80 % of world production), led by the Prussian industrialist Benjamin Wegner.

In 1938, John Livingood and Glenn Seaborg discovered cobalt-60.

The word cobalt comes from the German Kobalt, which in turn comes from Kobold (from old high German kobe or closet, enclave (cf. english cove) and hold which means goblin) meaning evil spirit, the metal being so called by miners, because it was poisonous and troublesome (it polluted and degraded the other mined elements, like nickel). Also, silver miners thought that evil spirits (Kobolde) would come into mines steal silver, replacing it with cobalt. Though the OED claims the derivation uncertain, it is often thought by philologists that cobalt ultimately comes from the Greek KABOLT, which means 'rogue' or 'knavish spirit', the original fons of Kobold, cobalt, and the English 'goblin'.

Notable characteristics

Cobalt is a hard ferromagnetic silver-white element. The Curie temperature is of 1388 K with 1.6~1.7 Bohr magnetons per atom. It is frequently associated with nickel, and both are characteristic ingredients of meteoric iron. Mammals require small amounts of cobalt salts. Cobalt-60, an artificially produced radioactive isotope of cobalt, is an important radioactive tracer and cancer-treatment agent. Cobalt has a relative permeability two thirds that of iron. Metallic cobalt commonly presents a mixture of two crystallographic structures hcp and fcc with a transition temperature hcp˜Æfcc of 722 K.

Common oxidation states of cobalt include +2, and +3, though +1 is also seen.