By James B. Hedrick, U.S. Critical Materials
Discovery of Gallium
Its existence was predicted by Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table
• Discovered by French chemist Paul E. Lecoq de Boisbaudran in Paris, France
• Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered it through a spectrascope seeing two violet lines in 1875
• The sample was obtained by extracting 0.65 grams of gallium from 430 kilograms of zinc blend ore
• The gallium was separated by electrolysis of gallium hydroxide in a potassium hydroxide solution
Gallium at Sheep Creek, Ravalli County, Montana
Based on the gallium content in the original samples of Ancylite-(Ce), it averages 692 parts per million (ppm)
• Sheep Creek is one of the richest gallium deposits in the United States
• The highest-grade gallium sample for Sheep Creek is 1,370 ppm
• U.S. Critical Materials is researching an environmentally-sound process to recover rare earths, strontium, and gallium
• Sheep Creek averages nearly 14 times the 50 ppm currently recovered for a profit as a byproduct of bauxite or zinc processing
• U.S. Critical Materials is currently exploring Sheep Creek, Montana, over a 10 square mile area