Barium green color. Barium sulfate is used as an insoluble additive to oil well drilling fluid, as well as in a purer form, as X-ray radiocontrast agents for imaging the human gastrointestinal tract. The soluble barium ion and soluble compounds are poisonous, and have been used as rodenticides. Barium is a soft, silvery-white metal, with a slight golden shade when ultrapure. The silvery-white color of barium metal rapidly vanishes upon oxidation in air yielding a dark gray oxide layer. Barium has a medium specific weight and good electrical conductivity. Ultrapure barium is very difficult to prepare, and therefore many properties of
Barium perchlorate Barium perchlorate Barium perchlorate is a powerful oxidizing agent, with the formula Ba(ClO). It is used in the pyrotechnic industry. Barium perchlorate decomposes at 505 °C. Gallucci and Gerkin (1988) analyzed the structure of the hydrate isomer Barium Perclorate Trihydrate (Ba(ClO)•3HO) by X-ray crystallography. The barium ions are coordinated by six water oxygen atoms at 2.919Å and six perchlorate oxygens at 3.026Å in a distorted icosahedral arrangement. The perchlorate fails by a narrow margin to have regular tetrahedral geometry, and has an average Cl-O bond length of 1.433Å. The space-group assignment of the structure was resolved, with the centrosymmetric assignment