Rhodium Facts
Rhodium Facts
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| Interesting Rhodium Facts: |
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| Rhodium was discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. |
| He was experimenting with South American platinum ores, and had already discovered palladium in the same way. |
| Red rhodium salts were a byproduct of his experiment with the ore, and from those salts Wollaston extracted the rhodium metal. |
| Rhodium has a considerably high reflectance. |
| It does not usually form an oxide. |
| Unlike all of the other group 9 elements, rhodium only has one electron in its outer shell. |
| There is only one stable isotope of natural rhodium, Rh-103. |
| There are twenty-five radioactive isotopes of rhodium, with eighteen of those having half-lives of less than one hour. |
| At only .00002 parts per million in the Earth's crust, rhodium is one of the rarest elements. |
| This scarcity inflates its price, and so it has very little commercial or industrial uses. |
| Rhodium is very difficult to extract from the ores that contain it. |
| Like ruthium, rhodium is a waste product of nuclear fission from Ur-235. |
| While nuclear waste could be a source of rhodium, it is still difficult and expensive to remove from the nuclear rods. |
| The unstable nature of the radioactive isotopes also makes it an unappealing, prohibitively expensive source of rhodium. |
| The major commercial use of rhodium is in automobile catalytic converters. |
| 87.2% of the rhodium produced goes into catalytic converters. |
| This application reduces harmful emissions from cars by converting carbon monoxide and other gases into less poisonous gases. |
| Rhodium flashing is the process of electroplating white gold or platinum with a reflective coating. |
| This process is used in jewelry making, as well as the rhodium process of coating silver to prevent tarnishing during wear. |
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