Palladium as an Element

Palladium was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston who found it in the crude ore from South America after conducting some chemical reactions. He named it after an asteroid 2 Pallas, which itself was named after an image of Pallas, a goddess killed by Athena. Because palladium was discovered so late, it did not generally serve as money, but it was sometimes used in coinage and some of these coins were even legal tender.

Chemically, palladium is an element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It belongs to noble metals, being one of the rarer elements in Earth’s crust (palladium is more than 30 times more rare than gold). Palladium is also a member of the family of platinum group metals (PGMs) which also includes platinum, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium. However, palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of those metals.

Palladium is a soft silver-white metal, which is not diversified geographically, as about 80 percent of its production comes from Russia and South Africa. In 2016, the annual mining production amounted to 6.7 million ounces, a tiny fraction of the gold mining production. The estimations of the above-ground stocks of palladium vary from 7 million to 26 million ounces.

Palladium is another element with great importance to the modern economy, but it’s often overshadowed by the other more famous and expensive precious metals. However, it has similar chemical properties to platinum, so it is also mainly used in the automotive catalytic converters. The main difference is that palladium is primarily employed in the gasoline cars, while platinum in diesel vehicles.

Palladium is also used in electronics, chemistry, dentistry, hydrogen purification, or hydrogen fuel cells. It also has applications in jewelry, mainly as an essential part of the so-called white gold. Despite its importance in the industry, palladium has been generally cheaper than platinum. However, as one can see in the chart below, the palladium to platinum ratio has been approaching parity recently.

_{Chart 1: The palladium to platinum ratio (red line, right axis), the price of palladium (yellow line, left axis, P.M. London Fix, weekly average), and the price of platinum (blue line, left axis, P.M. London Fix, weekly average).}

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