So, I learned something I did not know. I knew platinum was used in catalytic convertors but did not know palladium was an alternative. I look it up and discover that Rhodium, another noble metal, is also used in convertors. I was curious and looked up the prices and found this link. http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/rhodium/
Interesting that there was a collapse in the price of Rhodium in’08. Now I have to go read about Ruthenium.
At one time, Rhodium sold for nearly $10K an ounce. I *do not* think Rh has the catalytic properties of Pd or Pt, but I could be wrong. But I would in any event imagine it is simply too damn rare to even be considered.
At the peak of Pt usage for cat converters it was priced over $2K, $2200 IIRC. (Too lazy to look up the chart, easily obtainable @ kitco.com) It was this pricing that drove the automakers to search for an alternative. In the years since they discovered how to use Pd, demand and thus price has steadily risen.
There was a time when it was thought that Russia had the absolute corner on Pd supplies and it was priced nearly $2K.
Pd has a very interesting property in that it can absorb about 500 times its volume in Hydrogen.
#randommetalfacts
You’ll probably want to look up iridium too, the last of the five platinum group metals. One interesting thing about iridium is that it was apparently quite prevalent in the meteorite that hit the Yucatan area and wiped out the dinosaurs. The presence of iridium in global soils from that same period was a big clue to the meteor strike.