Palladium: The highly volatile, very stable precious metal

Not all that glitters is gold. Or silver. Or platinum. Turns out, there are other precious metals—like palladium, although you’re unlikely to wear it on your finger or around your neck. Precious metals are defined by chemistry just as much as price. They’re all “noble,” like noble gases, the ones you remember from the far right of the periodic table, in that they don’t interact much with other elements. You don’t hear of gold corroding, do you? Palladium is key to the catalytic converter in your car, a pollution-preventing device that you probably don’t think about much, at least until thieves remove it for the value of the palladium within. It might be chemically stable, but its price is quite volatile, swinging up and down more than 40% just in the past two months. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Daily Obsession] Palladium April 20, 2020 A noble element --------------------------------------------------------------- Not all that glitters is gold. Or silver. Or platinum. Turns out, there are other precious metals—like palladium, although you’re unlikely to wear it on your finger or around your neck. Precious metals are defined by chemistry just as much as price. They’re all “noble,” like noble gases, the ones you remember from the far right of the periodic table, in that they don’t interact much with other elements. You don’t hear of gold corroding, do you? Palladium is key to the catalytic converter in your car, a pollution-preventing device that you probably don’t think about much, at least until thieves remove it for the value of the palladium within. It might be chemically stable, but its price is quite volatile, swinging up and down more than 40% just in the past two months. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( By the digits [4.5g:]( Amount of palladium in an average catalytic converter [$2,840/oz:]( Price on Feb. 27, 2020 $450: Market price for a catalytic converter’s worth of palladium on that day [30x:]( Rarity of palladium compared to gold [3,986:]( Reports of stolen catalytic converters in the US in 2015, when the price averaged only $696/oz (the last year for which data is available) [60%:]( Rise in palladium futures in 2018, highest in the 35 key commodities tracked by Bloomberg [900:]( Times its own weight room-temperature palladium can absorb of hydrogen Charted Robert F. Bukaty/AP Explain it like I’m 5! How does palladium capture pollutants? --------------------------------------------------------------- Palladium only interacts with a few other types of chemicals—including pollutants from gasoline engines like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides (or NOx) and hydrocarbons, which are harmful to human health and contribute to climate change. The pollutants can be transformed into less harmful molecules, like oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. (CO2 contributes to climate change, but far less than the untreated alternative.) But the activation energy for that transformation is very high. The few grams of palladium in a catalytic converter catalyze those chemical reactions—lowering the activation energy and allowing the reactions to take place, which might sound familiar from high school chemistry. Palladium (or platinum or rhodium) has electrons in the d-orbital, far enough from the nucleus that the bonds holding the electrons close to the nucleus are fairly weak, so those electrons can interact a bit with nearby molecules. The bonds in the molecules in the pollutants that butt up against the palladium weaken, in order to interact with the palladium, and then find it easier to reconnect with each other configured as the less harmful molecules. As with any catalyst, the palladium doesn’t get consumed or changed in the reaction—the palladium molecule’s electrons stay put. REUTERS/Lisa Baertlein Membership On-demand is in demand --------------------------------------------------------------- In the space of a month, on-demand delivery companies have transformed from a luxury of the rich to the connective tissue holding much of the economy together. The extreme societal changes demanded by the virus [have given these services an unprecedented opportunity](. [Read now]( Fun fact! Palladium wasn’t named for Pallas Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom—at least not directly. Palladium was named after [the asteroid 2 Pallas]( the second-largest on record, discovered right before the element. Wellcome Images Origin story A precious reveal --------------------------------------------------------------- “In 1803 there was circulated throughout the British scientific world a notice of a type almost unparalleled in the history of chemistry,” begins the paper [“On the Discovery of Palladium.”]( “[The author] could not have foreseen the years of acrimonious debate, the bitter partisanship, and the ultimate disgrace of a prominent chemist.” The author was William H. Wollaston, a [polymathic physician]( who, among other things, invented the [camera lucida]( and who became independently wealthy by discovering [how to process platinum ore]( for industrial use. His work on platinum led to his discovery of palladium in 1803, which he produced as a residue by [dissolving platinum]( in hydrochloric and nitric acid. (Wollaston discovered rhodium shortly thereafter.) Rather than publishing the discovery, though, he posted [1,000 anonymous leaflets]( samples of the new element starting at five shillings’ worth—about £5, or $6.25 today. Wollaston’s unconventional announcement raised the suspicion of fellow chemist Richard Chenevix, who bought almost all the samples, spent a couple of weeks of 14-hour days analyzing them, and published an award-winning analysis arguing it was a mere platinum-mercury alloy. The still-anonymous Wollaston bet anyone £20 (about £2,000, or $2,500, today), through another advertisement, to make the alloy and prove Chenevix right. Wollaston [broke his silence in 1805](. Wollaston’s stunt and Chenevix’s incorrect analysis [likely damaged both]( their reputations; Chenevix eventually [became a playwright](. But the two peers remained friendly, and are both memorialized with mineral names for their scientific accomplishments. Have a friend who would enjoy our Obsession with Palladium? [ [Forward link to a friend](mailto:?subject=Thought you'd enjoy.&body=Read this Quartz Daily Obsession email – to the email – Department of Jargon Capital-p Palladium --------------------------------------------------------------- There’s the [London Palladium]( the [Hollywood Palladium]( the [Worcester, Massachusetts Palladium]( the [Palladium Saint Louis]( and Palladia in [Tampa Bay, Florida]( [Carmel, Indiana]( [New York]( and elsewhere, but they’re not drafting off the precious metal. The London Palladium rose in 1910, designed by the architect of the similarly august [London Coliseum]( and [meant to compete with it]( the Hippodrome, and the Lyceum. Thus the circus promoter who built the Palladium chose another classical reference. The only problem is that the classical “palladium” was not a venue [as its developer believed]( but a [statue of Pallas]( erected in Troy as a safeguard and brought to Rome by Aeneas, which became a catchall term for a talismanic figure or icon with that purpose, particularly in early Christianity. Nevertheless, the name stuck and the mistake proliferated. Giphy pop quiz Which superhero was poisoned by the palladium in their chest? Wonder WomanAnt-ManSupermanIron Man Correct. Tony Stark fitted himself with a tiny palladium arc reactor until the precious metal began to leak into his bloodstream, at which point he had to synthesize a new replacement element. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Million-dollar question Why is palladium so financially volatile? --------------------------------------------------------------- The price of palladium has been on a gradual upswing for years, but within that general trend, it has varied wildly. Because palladium is used mostly for catalytic converters, the broad price increase has come as more and more cars are sold, and [demand exceeds supply](. Volkswagen’s cheating on emissions tests has caused car buyers to skip diesel, which uses platinum-based catalytic converters, further increasing demand. Recent [Chinese]( and [European rules]( requiring reduced emissions have as well. Electric cars don’t emit pollutants, so they don’t need catalytic converters, which might eventually curb the trend. The local swings are due to variations in supply. Palladium is produced as a byproduct of mining for other metals, so it’s hard for mining companies to produce more quickly. Political volatility contributes as well. A Russian company, Nornickel, [controls about 40%]( of the world’s palladium supply, so worries about [instability related to Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine]( in 2014, and its 2016 interference in the US election, leading to sanctions on companies owned by Putin-linked oligarchs, have spiked the price too. Car companies hedge against big spikes in price, but [unsophisticated speculation by Ford]( in the early 2000s cost it about a billion dollars. So take that as a warning if you try to get into the palladium market on your own. The same US Mint that creates gold and silver coins also makes palladium ones, and the people urging consumers to invest their retirement savings in precious metals… [may be ignoble]( a Quartz investigation found. Person of interest Catalyze this --------------------------------------------------------------- Palladium was put to work in this process by a French chemical engineer lured to America for his catalytic intelligence. Eugene Houdry discovered that the common, cheap clay substances known as [Fuller’s earth]( could be [used to turn]( long, harder-to-boil carbon chains into short, easier-to-boil carbon chains. In layman’s terms, that means [cracking crude oil into gas](. Better, cheaper gas helped the Allies win World War II. It souped up car culture in the economic boom following the war as well, and in the 1950s scientists proved that automobiles were a major contributor to [increasingly dirty air]( led by CalTech scientist [Arie Haagen-Smit](. Houdry began investigating how he could lessen the problem with a similar catalytic process. In 1954, he received a patent for a [“catalytic converter for exhaust gases,”]( which recommends platinum and palladium as materials. Leaded gasoline, incompatible with catalytic converters, delayed their adoption, but by 1975 they were in [broad use]( on new US models. Library of Congress This one weird trick! The very picture of palladium --------------------------------------------------------------- Palladium printing was a photograph printing technique used [about 100 years ago](. Characterized by very warm tones, it’s still used sometimes for art prints. Watch this! It’s shockingly quick to steal a catalytic converter --------------------------------------------------------------- Two thieves and a getaway driver pull off a little heist in the Colindale neighborhood of London. REUTERS/Michael Dalder poll The better palladium is... [Click here to vote]( The elementThe venue 💬 let's talk! 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