Lanthanum (III) Chloride Hydrate

Lanthanum (III) Chloride hydrate is a water-soluble, white crystalline material. It has a low toxicity and is commonly used to remove phosphates from aqueous systems, such as aquariums. It’s also a chemical reagent for cell biology experiments and a catalyst for crude oil processing.

Lanthanum Phosphate is extremely insoluble in water, and forms even when phosphates are at low concentrations. Therefore, when Lanthanum Chloride is added to aqueous environments such as lakes or aquarium tanks, it efficiently precipitates phosphates to hasten their removal in the water filtration system. A group of engineers from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China went step further, a produced a Lanthanum-doped zeolite using Lanthanum trichloride. The zeolite acted as a sorbent for phosphate, forming Lanthanum Phosphate within the porous material. The material was then stripped of the phosphate using diluted Sodium Hydroxide, regenerating the material for reuse.

Lanthanum trichloride hydrate is also used to prepare industrial catalysts. A group of chemists from the Technical University of München in Germany created a Lanthanum Chloride-based catalyst for the oxidative chlorination of methane. They first prepared Lanthanum oxychloride from an aqueous mixture of Lanthanum Chloride and Ammonium Hydroxide. The precipitate was calcined at 550 degrees Celsius to obtain the final material. The chemists lined a fixed-bed tubular reactor with the catalyst and ran various experiments with gas flows of methane, oxygen, hydrochloric acid, nitrogen, and helium. The process forms Lanthanum Chloride on the surface of the Lanthanum oxychloride, through a transient hypochlorite species. The methane forms an intermediate with the hypochlorite and forms methyl chloride, leaving a hydroxy group on the surface of the catalyst. The HCl gas then reacts with the hydroxy group, forming water and regenerating the catalyst surface with chloride ions.

Lanthanum trihloride, a reagent in biochemistry, was studied by chemists at Peking University in China. Lanthanum ions, similar in size to Calcium ions, have a high affinity for Calcium sites on proteins, blocking intracellular Calcium channels. In these experiments, cells treated with Lanthanum (III) Chloride showed increased resistance to hydrogen peroxide-enhanced calcification, suggesting Lanthanum ions altered cellular signaling pathways that prompt the formation of atherosclerotic lesions.

References

Xie, J., Wang, Z., Fang, D., Li, C., & Wu, D. (2014). Green synthesis of a novel hybrid sorbent of zeolite/lanthanum hydroxide and its application in the removal and recovery of phosphate from water. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, 423, 13–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCIS.2014.02.020

Peringer, E., Salzinger, M., Hutt, M., Lemonidou, A. A., & Lercher, J. A. (2009). Modified Lanthanum Catalysts for Oxidative Chlorination of Methane. Topics in Catalysis 2009 52:9, 52(9), 1220–1231. https://doi.org/10.1007/S11244-009-9265-6

Shi, Y., Gou, B. di, Shi, Y. L., Zhang, T. L., & Wang, K. (2008). Lanthanum chloride suppresses hydrogen peroxide-enhanced calcification in rat calcifying vascular cells. BioMetals 2008 22:2, 22(2), 317–327. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10534-008-9168-1