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Palladium [Pd] locate me
CAS-ID: 7440-05-3
An: 46 N: 60
Am: 106.42 (1) g/mol
Group No: 10
Group Name: Precious metal or Platinum group metal
Block: d-block  Period: 5
State: solid at 298 K
Colour: silvery white metallic Classification: Metallic
Boiling Point: 3236K (2963°C)
Melting Point: 1828.05K (1554.9°C)
Density: 12.023g/cm3
Discovery Information
Who: William Wollaston
When: 1803
Where: England
Name Origin
Greek: Pallas goddess of wisdom and after the asteroid discovered in 1803.
 "Palladium" in different languages.
Sources
Obtained with platinum, nickel, copper and mercury ores. Occurs primarily in Siberia, the Ural Mountains, Ontario Canada and South Africa.
Annual world wide production is arond 24 tons.
Abundance
 Universe: 0.002 ppm (by weight)
 Sun: 0.003 ppm (by weight)
 Carbonaceous meteorite: 0.67 ppm
 Earth's Crust: 0.0063 ppm
 Seawater:
   Atlantic surface: n/a ppm
   Atlantic deep: n/a ppm
   Pacific surface: 1.9 x 10-8 ppm
   Pacific deep: 6.8 x 10-8 ppm
Uses
The largest use of palladium today is in catalytic converters. It is also used in alloys for telecommunication equipment switching systems and electrical relays, catalyst for reforming cracked petroleum fractions, metallizing ceramics, mixed with gold to make "white gold" for jewellery, aircraft sparkplugs, dentistry, surgical instruments.
Palladium dichloride (PdCl2) can absorb large amounts of carbon monoxide gas and is used in carbon monoxide detectors.
History
Palladium was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803. This element was named by Wollaston in 1804 after the asteroid Pallas, which was discovered two years earlier.
Wollaston found palladium in crude platinum ore from South America by dissolving the ore in aqua regia, neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide, and precipitating platinum as ammonium chloroplatinate with ammonium chloride. He added mercuric cyanide to form the compound palladium cyanide, which was heated to extract palladium metal.
Palladium chloride was at one time prescribed as a tuberculosis treatment at the rate of 0.065g per day (approximately one milligram per kilogram of body weight). This treatment did not have many negative side effects, but was later replaced by more effective drugs.
Notes
This metal has the uncommon ability to absorb up to 900 times its own volume of hydrogen at room temperatures.
In 2000, The Ford Motor Company created a price bubble in palladium by stockpiling large amounts of the metal, fearing interrupted supplies from Russia. As prices fell in early 2001, Ford lost nearly US$1 billion.
Hazards
Fine powder may cause fire or explosion in air. It may cause skin, eye or respiratory tract irritation.