Jakarta –
Many people think that gold is precious metal the rarest and most expensive. Even though there are other precious metals that are rarer and more expensive than gold. What’s that?
Quoting from IFL Science, metals have different and inconsistent monetary values. Due to the inconsistency of gold with its conductivity, durability and beauty, it is placed in the top five most expensive metals.
The price of gold can be very expensive up to $ 1,850 or around IDR 28 million per ounce. Expensive? Of course! But it pales in comparison to rhodium.
Rhodium is currently becoming precious metal the most expensive as well as one of the rarest. According to description IFL Science, the price of rhodium can reach $ 10,300 or around IDR 159 million per ounce. Then, what makes it so expensive?
Rhodium Has the Perfect Catalyst
Rhodium does not react easily with oxygen, which is why it is a noble metal and it is an excellent catalyst because it is resistant to corrosion and oxidation.
Rhodium has overall hardiness and a high melting point of 1,964 degrees Celsius or 3,567 degrees Fahrenheit.
Therefore, this places it among the platinum group metals along with platinum, palladium, osmium, iridium, and ruthenium.
Rhodium has the ability to withstand water and air temperatures up to 600 degrees Celsius or the equivalent of 1,112 degrees Fahrenheit.
Its insoluble in acids makes rhodium very versatile, such as its use in automobiles, airplanes, electrical contacts, and high temperature thermocouples and resistance wires.
Rhodium Rare than Gold
According to the Royal Society of Chemistry, rhodium is a rare metal, even rarer than gold.
As the rarest platinum group metal, rhodium is present at approximately 0.000037 parts per million in the earth’s crust.
Meanwhile, gold can be found in abundance around 0.0013 parts per million. Rhodium is produced primarily in South Africa and Russia, so rhodium containing up to 0.1 percent of the precious metal can occur as a by-product of refining copper and nickel ores.
About 16 tons of rhodium are produced annually with estimated reserves of 3,000 tons.
Rhodium was first discovered by William Hyde Wollaston, an English chemist in 1803 by extracting the element from a piece of platinum ore from South America.
The discovery came shortly after Wollaston discovered another platinum group metal, namely palladium.
Rhodium is commonly found with platinum deposits. From Wollaston’s samples, he obtained rhodium by removing the platinum and palladium, then left behind a dark red powder which was treated with hydrogen gas to reveal the precious metal from rhodium.
The name rhodium inni comes from the Greek word “rhodon” which means rose. The name of the solid metal glows with a bright, reflective silver-white color in reference to the red color that the metal emits itself.
From its rarity to beauty, statistics from 2019 show that a single auto-catalyst in catalytic production creates nearly 90 percent of the demand for rhodium, a arguably unofficial use for either. precious metal rarest on Earth.
Watch Video “Fugitive PT Freeport Gold Concentrate Thief Arrested in Makassar“
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