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Palladium theft rampant – FT

29th January 2019

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

     

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Palladium, used in catalytic converters that reduce harmful petrol vehicle emissions, is catalysing a crime wave in the UK, says the Financial Times (FT) of London.

“Thieves are stealing catalytic converters – often in broad daylight – and selling the devices to illegal scrap dealers for cash,” journalists Neil Hume and Henry Sanderson state in the latest edition of FT Weekend.

This rampant theft follows palladium reaching $1 434/oz, way above the price of platinum, which can be used as an alternative.

The automotive industry has an option to shift back to platinum for its auto catalysis needs but is not showing any signs of doing so yet, although such switches have taken place surprisingly fast in the past.

In 1988, for example, I happened to be interviewing former Anglo Platinum CEO Barry Davison when the Ford Motor Company dropped its bombshell of switching from platinum to palladium, which at that stage was decidedly cheaper.

“The next two years will see major shifts,” CPM Group predicts in a note to Mining Weekly Online.

Palladium’s status as a by-product of mines in South Africa and Russia means production is unable to react to meet short-term demand despite the surging price, reports Bloomberg.

After palladium took the petrol vehicle market, platinum did very well as the metal of choice in diesel auto catalysis – until the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 issued a notice of violation of the Clean Air Act to German automaker Volkswagen, which sparked the cold-shouldering of diesel vehicles and the downfall of platinum, currently trading in the $800/oz doldrums.

Some commentators are now even putting question marks over what has been taken for granted in the past – the future dominance of platinum in hydrogen fuel cells, which have for long been seen as platinum’s future demand driver.

“They no longer need to use platinum,” says CPM Group of the use of the noble metal in hydrogen fuel cells.

“If you get the hydrogen distribution safe and affordable, the auto industry goes to hydrogen engines,” adds CPM, which puts in the lowest-cost category by far the economics of manufacturing and operating hydrogen internal combustion engine vehicles, which it calculates to be far cheaper than both electric battery and fuel cell options.

Meanwhile, a promising new vehicle technology that has just popped up out of nowhere has turned its back on platinum and uses a cobalt-based catalyst.

Electriq-Global plans to build a demonstration plant in Israel in April to show that its zero-emission vehicle technology provides “twice the range at half the price” when compared with battery electric vehicles.

Sixty per cent of the boron-containing fuel used by Electriq-Global is water, which is converted into hydrogen and then into electricity to power the vehicle.

Moreover, the spent fuel is recovered, replenished with hydrogen and water and recycled.

“We replace the compressed hydrogen system with a hydrogen-on-demand system based on a safe liquid carrier. The catalyst of our system does not include any noble metal like platinum. Mostly, it is based on cobalt,” Electriq-Global CEO Guy Michrowski tells Mining Weekly Online.

The energy density of the system is said to be up to 15 times greater than batteries currently used by electric vehicles.

“Our system releases hydrogen on demand from the fuel. When the fuel comes into contact with the catalyst, the reaction releases hydrogen that feeds the fuel cell, creating electricity to power the vehicle. Our fuel is safe, economical, and recyclable. We even take the old depleted fuel and add more hydrogen back in, producing new fuel that can be used again and again,” Michrowski said in response to Mining Weekly Online’s associate publication, Engineering News Online.

Volkswagen said last Friday that it is preparing to mass produce electric vehicles, manufacture battery cells and oversee battery cell recycling.

Jaguar Land Rover South Africa MD Richard Gouverneur predicted this week that the global average of electric vehicles would account for up to 11% of all new cars sold in 2025, and the Guardian newspaper reported that Hollander Wiebe Wakker had driven 89 000 km from Amsterdam to Adelaide to prove that electric cars can go the distance.

If a critical mass of activity eventuates on the electric vehicle front, it will likely put downward pressure on palladium. In the meantime, it has overtaken gold and is doing very well, although not as well as rhodium, which is trading at  $2 475/oz.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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