 Discovery Information
|
| Who: William Wollaston |
| When: 1803 |
| Where: England |
|
| Name Origin
|
| Greek: Pallas goddess of wisdom and after the asteroid discovered in 1803. |
| "Palladium" in different languages. |
|
| Sources
|
| Obtained with platinum, nickel, copper and mercury ores. Occurs primarily in Siberia, the Ural Mountains, Ontario Canada and South Africa.
|
| Annual world wide production is arond 24 tons. |
|
| Abundance
|
| Universe: 0.002 ppm (by weight) |
| Sun: 0.003 ppm (by weight) |
| Carbonaceous meteorite: 0.67 ppm |
| Earth's Crust: 0.0063 ppm |
| Seawater: |
| Atlantic surface: n/a ppm |
| Atlantic deep: n/a ppm |
| Pacific surface: 1.9 x 10-8 ppm
|
| Pacific deep: 6.8 x 10-8 ppm
|
|
| Uses
|
| The largest use of palladium today is in catalytic converters. It is also used in alloys for telecommunication equipment switching systems and electrical relays, catalyst for reforming cracked petroleum fractions, metallizing ceramics, mixed with gold to make "white gold" for jewellery, aircraft sparkplugs, dentistry, surgical instruments.
|
| Palladium dichloride (PdCl2) can absorb large amounts of carbon monoxide gas and is used in carbon monoxide detectors.
|
|
| History
|
| Palladium was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803. This element was named by Wollaston in 1804 after the asteroid Pallas, which was discovered two years earlier.
|
| Wollaston found palladium in crude platinum ore from South America by dissolving the ore in aqua regia, neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide, and precipitating platinum as ammonium chloroplatinate with ammonium chloride. He added mercuric cyanide to form the compound palladium cyanide, which
was heated to extract palladium metal.
|
| Palladium chloride was at one time prescribed as a tuberculosis treatment at the rate of 0.065g per day (approximately one milligram per kilogram
of body weight). This treatment did not have many negative side effects, but was later replaced by more effective drugs.
|
|
| Notes
|
| This metal has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures.
|
| In 2000, The Ford Motor Company created a price bubble in palladium by stockpiling large amounts of the metal, fearing interrupted
supplies from Russia. As prices fell in early 2001, Ford lost nearly US$1 billion.
|
|
| Hazards
|
| Fine powder may cause fire or explosion in air. It may cause skin, eye or respiratory tract irritation. |
