Río Otún vs Cobalt

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The Otún River (Río Otún) is a river in the Risaralda department of Colombia. Its source is Lake Otún, fed by meltwater from Nevado Santa Isabel, and its outlet is the Cauca River. The Otún River passes between the cities of Pereira and Dosquebradas, and is crossed at that point by the César Gaviria Trujillo Viaduct, one of the largest cable-stayed bridges in South America. The Otún River is the only source of drinking water for Pereira and Dosquebradas.

The local water company takes about 1.8 cubic metres per second (64 cu ft/s) from the river at a site known as Nuevo Libaré. Agricultural development in that region has affected the quality of the water from the river, with pig and chicken farms as well as human waste water being major sources of bacteriological contamination.[1]The river passes through several protected zones including the Otún Quimbaya Flora and Fauna Sanctuary.

Source: Wikipedia

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Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. Like nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal. Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass, but the color was later thought to be due to the known metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue-pigment-producing minerals; they were so named because they were poor in known metals, and gave poisonous arsenic-containing fumes when smelted. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), and this was ultimately named for the kobold. Today, some cobalt is produced specifically from one of a number of metallic-lustered ores, such as cobaltite (CoAsS). The element is, however, more usually produced as a by-product of copper and nickel mining.

The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia yields most of the global cobalt production. World production in 2016 was 116,000 metric tons (114,000 long tons; 128,000 short tons) (according to Natural Resources Canada), and the DRC alone accounted for more than 50%.Cobalt is primarily used in lithium-ion batteries, and in the manufacture of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. The compounds cobalt silicate and cobalt(II) aluminate (CoAl2O4, cobalt blue) give a distinctive deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints and varnishes. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one stable isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is a commercially important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer and for the production of high-energy gamma rays. Cobalt is the active center of a group of coenzymes called cobalamins. Vitamin B12, the best-known example of the type, is an essential vitamin for all animals. Cobalt in inorganic form is also a micronutrient for bacteria, algae, and fungi.

Source: Wikipedia