Over the years, lots of high-quality pens and pencils have been made of platinum. They include fountain pens, ballpoint pens, and mechanical pencils. Remember that platinum and silver are both white metals that can be difficult to tell apart by eye, but that platinum is more valuable.
80% of the world's current production comes from South Africa and the Sudbury Basin of Canada. Smaller reserves can be found in the United States, Zimbabwe and Australia. Platinum is also attained through recycling.
Platinum occurs in nature as the pure metal and also in alloys with other metals of the group, principally in the alluvial deposits of the Ural Mountains, of Columbia, and of some parts of the western United States.
Jewelry factories that repair or produce platinum jewelry can be a great source of platinum scrap. Often, it can be found in floor dust, bench sweepings, and “squiggles” that are made when platinum is produced on machinery.
Platinum – Hard Drives, Circuit board components. Palladium – Hard Drives, Circuit board components (capacitors) Copper – CPU heat sinks, wiring and cables, Printed Circuit Boards, Computer Chips.
Appliances that you use to heat up products (coffee makers, stoves) or cool down spaces (air conditioners, refrigerators) contain thermocouples. These are wire-like devices that are composed of several metals. Thermocouples may contain palladium, platinum, rhodium, and sometimes a small amount of gold.
Development of PGM use in batteries has also shown that platinum and palladium are able to improve the energy density of existing Lithium-ion batteries.
Platinum spark plugs come in two varieties - single and double platinum. A single platinum plug is much like a copper spark plug with a platinum disc welded to the center electrode; a double platinum spark plug has a platinum disc on both the center and side electrodes.
Modern Platinum Mining Techniques. Most of the mining for platinum ore occurs deep underground. To extract the mineral-rich materials, miners pack explosives into holes drilled in the rock and blast it into smaller pieces. The broken rock is then collected and transported to the surface for processing.
Today, Australia produces a relatively minute amount of platinum. But in the 1880s and 1890s the biggest platinum field in the world was in Fifield, New South Wales, where platinum is still mined to this day.
Answer. The simplest tests are heating and discoloration. If the item is heated, for example, in a Bunsen flame, platinum will be more difficult or impossible to melt and the platinum will not discolour. The effect of acid is another basic test.
It is opaque, silvery gray, and markedly dense. Platinum usually occurs as disseminated grains in ironand magnesium-rich igneous rocks and in quartz veins associated with hematite, chlorite, and pyrolusite.
Platinum is silvery-white, but also shades into tin-white, silver-grey, steel grey and dark grey. It is noteworthy for its ductility, malleability, high density, and lack of chemical and temperature reactivity.
Plutonium generally isn't found in nature. Trace elements of plutonium are found in naturally occurring uranium ores. Here, it is formed in a way similar to neptunium: by irradiation of natural uranium with neutrons followed by beta decay. Primarily, however, plutonium is a byproduct of the nuclear power industry.
PALLADIUM. Like platinum, most palladium (Pd) is used in catalytic converters. It is also used in jewellery and some dental healthcare applications such as fillings and crowns. About 8% of palladium is used in the electronics industry.
Platinum is 30 times more rare than gold. If all the platinum ever mined were melted and poured into an Olympic-sized pool, the platinum would barely reach your ankles. Gold, however, would fill three pools.
Total worldwide reserves of platinum group metals are estimated to be some 70,000 metric tons. Almost all of it, some 90 percent, is located in the Earth's crust of South Africa. Far behind it, other major countries are Russia, Zimbabwe, the United States, and Canada.
A standard catalytic converter contains about 3 – 7 grams (0.106 – 0.247 ounces) of platinum. The amount usually depends on your vehicle's make, model, and year, which is why some cars have a relatively low amount of platinum while others may have double the usual amount.
You can find palladium scrap in many different items. A couple places to look include: Palladium alloys used for manufacturing: Look out for palladium sponges, palladium flakes, palladium sputter and sputtering targets. Palladium jewelry items: This can include rings, chains, bracelets, jewelry scrap.
Platinum is commonly used in jewellery and electronics. Although this precious metal looks great and is an excellent conductor, it has no magnetic properties.
The average smartphone contains small amounts of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. But mining these metals from ore can be arduous; it takes a tonne of ore to get 1g of gold. Stripping them from existing mobile phones is not easy but can yield a surprising amount of material.
Purity & Quality Marks
Platinum jewelry has a high level of purity that makes it naturally hypoallergenic, making it the perfect choice for people with sensitive skin. In the United States, platinum jewelry generally contains 85- to 95-percent pure platinum. By comparison, 14-karat gold is only 58.3-percent pure gold.