Transition Metals
Are We Running Out?
Transition metals are all around us and are more involved in our everyday life than we
could ever imagine. But what if they were to run out? Do we even have any alternatives or
a backup plan in case we don’t have these metals anymore?
In this essay we will be taking a look at what transition metals are, and discussing the
importance and the different uses of the platinum group metals, which is a subset of 6
metals from the transition metals. We will also look at their chemical properties and how
these properties make them useful. We will then look into how they are obtained and
discuss the likelihood of running out of them, and then explore any possible alternatives in
case we do run out of these metals.
According to IUPAC, Compendium of Chemical Technology,
Second Edition (1997), a transition metal is described as “an
element whose atom has a partially lled d sub shell, or
which can give rise to cations with an incomplete d sub shell”
On the periodic table they are placed between the s-block and p-block elements, basically
they are placed between Group 2 and Group 3. They are the d-block elements.
These metals are called the transition metals due to their unstable and transitional
behaviour between the s block and p block elements. They act as a bridge of sorts between
the elements with the metallic properties and the elements with the non metallic
properties.
A subset of 6 elements from the transition metals which are structurally and chemically
similar to each other. They consist platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), rhodium (Rh), ruthenium
(Ru), iridium (Ir), and osmium (Os).
Just like gold and silver, these metals aren’t much reactive due to their high resistance to
chemical attacks, and so these 6 elements are also called the ‘noble metals’. All of them
also have extremely high melting points, meaning that the intermolecular forces are much
stronger, hence the solid metals will be much stronger as well, meaning that these metals
will be much more durable. They are used as catalysts and help to speed up chemical
reactions without changing themselves in any way. Their high corrosion resistance and can
resist many salts and oxides.
These metals have a wide range of uses across the different industries (as in the medical
and industrial elds for example). In fact, according to the International Platinum Group
Metals Association (IPA), they estimate that “one in four of the goods manufactured today
either contain PGMs or had PGMs play a key role in their manufacture”, which just
displays how the platinum group metals play such an important role in our day to day
life.
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, Platinum is the most known platinum group metal, and is used a lot in jewellery making.
Platinum along with palladium can be used as catalysts and speed up reactions.
Palladium’s radioactive isotope is even being tested to see if it can be used as an effective
treatment for breast and prostate cancer. Rhodium is another catalyst and is used in
vehicle emission systems. Ruthenium is often used in chemicals such as adhesives and
cleaning liquids. Iridium is the rarest from the platinum group metals and due to its
biological compatibility, it can be quite useful in many medical applications as well.
Osmium is the densest metal of the group, hence the hardest, and is used for DNA
applications
Due to the overall catalytic nature of these metals, the automotive industry has a high
demand for them, which will only keep on increasing since they can help to reduce the
vehicle carbon emissions, which are a serious environmental concern at the moment.
The platinum group metals are quite rare. They can be obtained either from copper
deposits or nickel deposits. These deposits contain small quantities of these metals in
them. But mining extracting these metals isn’t enough, due to their demand being much
higher than the supply. Also mining and extracting these metals can lead to various
harmful greenhouse gas emissions consume higher levels of energy and water as well,
which results in an overall damage to the Earths climate and atmosphere
This means that they have to be obtained by recycling jewellery, catalytic converters and
electronic appliances which include these metals. In fact, an article written on
recycling.com claims that “recycling continues to supply more than one-quarter of
platinum group metals’ demand“.
Another problem is the fact that countries which produce platinum group metals want to
exploit this growing demand. For example, as mentioned in a news article by Voa News
(May 2022), South Africa “is poised to take advantage of the growing demand for
platinum group metals”. They are the worlds largest producer for platinum and produce
half of the worlds palladium. This could be seen as a monopoly of sorts, and they can
easily raise their prices and exploit other countries, specially because the demand is
growing a lot. Another challenge would be the strikes that a lot of workers are holding in a
lot of countries with mines that produce the platinum group metals, because these
workers are demanding higher wages, and there are political issues involved as well.
If we take this increasing demand into consideration and the fact that it keeps on
exceeding the supply, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is a
high chance that by 2050, we would run completely out of platinum which would result in
no platinum being available to produce jewellery, coins, catalytic converters and etc.
Keeping these statistics in our mind, we must prepare alternatives for the platinum group
metals in case we run out of them. Gold, for instance, can be used for catalytic converters
when dispersed as nano sized particles. Iron can be used as a catalyst as well, since it can
be activated for its use as a catalyst.
In fact, at the Paci c Northwest National Laboratory, a researchers-lead team designed a
catalyst in which the cobalt got interspersed with nitrogen and carbon. This turned out to
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