The Most Expensive Precious Metal: Rhodium

It is a very rare precious metal and is about 5.5 times more valuable than gold.

Gold, due to its durability and attractive appearance, is one of the most expensive precious metals. But much more expensive than gold is another metal that you most likely have at home, and it is called rhodium, writes IFLScience.

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One of the rarest precious metals is rhodium, which is at the same time the most expensive – the price per ounce is about 10 thousand dollars. At the same time, the price of an ounce of gold is about $1,800. You may even have rhodium in your home because it is used to cover jewelry, in particular gold and silver items. What is the uniqueness of rhodium?

Rhodium was discovered back in the early 19th century by the English chemist William Wollaston, when he extracted this rare metal from a piece of platinum ore found in South America. By the way, in the same ore, he discovered another previously unknown metal – palladium. The scientist treated platinum ore with hydrogen gas to get a dark red powder, which turned out to be rhodium. This metal got its name from the Greek word “rhodon”, which means “rose”. Its name is associated with the red color of metal salts. Although he himself has a silver color.

Rhodium is a by-product of platinum and nickel ore processing and is mostly mined in South Africa. Although it is also mined in Canada, Colombia and the Russian Federation. Every year, the volume of rhodium mining is approximately 30 tons, and the total reserves of rhodium on Earth are estimated at 3,000 tons.

Rhodium plated white gold wedding ring

Photo: Wikipedia

Rhodium is the rarest metal of the platinum group and in the earth’s crust it is approximately 0.000037 parts per million, while the amount of gold is 0.0013 parts per million. Rhodium does not react well with oxygen, so it can resist corrosion and oxidation well. Because rhodium is so resistant to breakage and has a melting point of 1964 degrees Celsius, it belongs to the platinum group metals, which also includes the aforementioned palladium, platinum itself, as well as iridium, ruthenium and osmium.

Rhodium, which is a very rare metal, can withstand ambient temperatures of up to 600 degrees Celsius. Rhodium is also insoluble in most acids. Therefore, rhodium is used not only in jewelry, but also in the manufacture of various elements of cars, aircraft and electrical engineering.

Yet the most famous precious metal is gold. As already wrote Focus this metal is the most malleable during processing, due to the fact that gold has its own unique secret.

Also Focus wrote that scientists told why gold became the main currency among people. It’s all about its special chemical properties, which made this metal one of the most expensive and popular.

We remind you that Focus I already wrote about how much gold exists on Earth and how much more people can get it. By the way, gold is in the body of every person.

2023-08-21 07:32:08
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