Element Xenon, Xe, Noble Gas
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Xenon History
By efforts of many of scientists, especially of Morris Travers, significant amounts of liquid air became accessible. Liquid hydrogen also became available for scientists, due to which William Ramsay and Morris Travers obtained an opportunity to start research of the residue left over from evaporating of such components of liquid air as helium, hydrogen, neon, oxygen, nitrogen and argon. It contained raw krypton. However, after evaporating krypton there was still a bubble with some gas in the vessel. The gas was emitting a blue glow when excited by electrical discharge and produced extremely very unusual, full-spectrum, from orange to violet, white light. These spectrum lines are the carte-de-visite of this element. Ramsay and Travers had all good reasons to suppose that a new element, inert, or noble gas, had been discovered. It was called xenon, from a Greek word meaning "strange one" or "stranger"; it was a stranger indeed in krypton fraction.
Xenon Occurrence
Abundance in atmosphere is 0.86x10-5 % by volume; deposits are estimated as 1.6-1011 m3. It is of limited occurrence in space: 1 xenon atom per 7.7x108 helium atoms. It is contained in gaseous inclusions of uranium-bearing minerals, up to 20% by mass, as well as in irradiated fuel of nuclear reactors.
Xenon Production
Xenon is produced as a by-product of air fractions separation. It may be extracted from krypton-xenon concentrate. Manufactured xenon is graded as pure, 99.4% by volume, and high-pure, 99.9%.
Xenon Neighbours
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