Sciencemadness Discussion Board

colors of palladium ion

woelen - 2-10-2006 at 10:00

Right now I have some palladium and salts of this metal have very interesting properties. I added a page to my website with colors of solutions and precipitates of palladium. If you have palladium, then it definitely is worth to investigate its properties. I just want to share its nice properties with you, hence this new thread.

http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/solutions/pd.html

12AX7 - 2-10-2006 at 13:37

Nice.

So unlike Mn(IV), Pd(IV) does not oxidize chloride, despite being a reasonable oxidizer? Interesting what a love of coordination can do I suppose!

Tim

JohnWW - 3-10-2006 at 00:59

Woelen - Palladium is expensive stuff! About as expensive as platinum, so I believe. You must be wealthy!

woelen - 3-10-2006 at 02:59

I have a nice job, and I have a good living, but calling me wealthy is a whole different thing ;).

This kind of experiments, however, only requires very small amounts of metal. I used only tens of mg's for making this webpage and then you do not need to be wealthy. I wish I would have more palladium and that I could use it spoonwise instead of by the mg.

The_Davster - 3-10-2006 at 04:53

;)

Very nice as always.

Jdurg - 3-10-2006 at 06:18

Quote:
Originally posted by JohnWW
Woelen - Palladium is expensive stuff! About as expensive as platinum, so I believe. You must be wealthy!


You're a bit mistaken there. Palladium is 1/3rd the cost of Platinum metal. Pt is approximately $39 per gram while Pd is only about $11 per gram. Picking up an ounce here or there isn't all that wallet killing. I've got about 5 ounces of it myself.

Nice!

Chemist514 - 3-10-2006 at 08:02

Just my 2 cents..
Very very nice. You must have a nice scale. I had thought about buying gold chloride for coolness factor and my 9 year old daughter wanted some precious metal compound in our
collection, I guess silver nitrate isnt precious enough for people these days. lol
All the best.

pantone159 - 3-10-2006 at 10:22

Quote:
Originally posted by Jdurg
Quote:
Originally posted by JohnWW
Palladium is expensive stuff! About as expensive as platinum, so I believe.


You're a bit mistaken there. Palladium is 1/3rd the cost of Platinum metal.


Around 1999 or so (IIRC), Pd was indeed more expensive than Pt, although usually Pd has been substantially cheaper.

What had happened, is that US SUV manufacturers had commited to using Pd, instead of other similar metals, in catalytic converters. (I don't remember why they needed Pd, but they did for some reason. At the time they made their decision, Pd was cheap relative to Pt.) Since those things are so grotequely monstrous, thus needing a lot per vehicle, and those vehicles were very popular around then (when hydrocarbons were abnormally cheap), the auto industry needed HUGE amounts of the stuff. More than the world supply, in fact. As a result, the Pd price spiked tremendously. I think that Ford managed to lose $US billions speculating on the stuff.

Now, the price is back to normal, well less than Pt.

The_Davster - 3-10-2006 at 19:54

Quote:
Originally posted by Jdurg
Pt is approximately $39 per gram while Pd is only about $11 per gram.


Try telling that to a professor who works with such precious metal compounds. They only know the prices from sigma and such. Hence you can sell/barter with them for it and rip them off while they think they are getting a great deal. One I spoke to said my 11g Pd was worth over a thousand dollars.:P Bartering commenced.(I still got ripped off based on how much the uni paid for those chemicals, but still a better deal than I could get them for!)

Fleaker - 4-10-2006 at 18:14

Rogue chemist is right! Most professors never think to prepare the stuff themselves (the salts) or buy an ounce or so of the bulk metal to save a few bucks. Most of what is in alfa aesar is priced about 1.5X the market value or more. I can understand such a price if you need a puratronic metal that's 6N or so, but not on 4N gold that one can buy for a fraction of their price.

Jdurg - 5-10-2006 at 07:22

Quote:
Originally posted by Fleaker
Rogue chemist is right! Most professors never think to prepare the stuff themselves (the salts) or buy an ounce or so of the bulk metal to save a few bucks. Most of what is in alfa aesar is priced about 1.5X the market value or more. I can understand such a price if you need a puratronic metal that's 6N or so, but not on 4N gold that one can buy for a fraction of their price.


That extra price goes into the fact that the purity is 100% guaranteed by the chemical company. If you purchase some 4N gold from an outside source, while they may claim that it's that pure they cannot guarantee it like the chemical companies can. So if you're doing work where you need to know the exact purity the extra cost is worth it.

If you're like me who just wants a nice looking sample, then the extra cost is insanely retarded. :D