# Rhodium



## Knobby22 (3 April 2020)

If I wanted to hoard a metal this would be it.
Useful, rare and has been going up. Even can be used in jewellery. It's sort of a better type of platinum.

https://moneyweek.com/504029/chart-of-the-week-rhodium-on-the-rise

A hard, shiny, silvery metal.

*Uses
*

alloying agent to harden platinum and palladium. Such alloys are used for furnace windings, thermocouple elements, bushings for glass fibre production, electrodes for aircraft spark plugs, and laboratory crucibles

used as an electrical contact material as it has a low electrical resistance, a low and stable contact resistance, and is highly resistant to corrosion

plated rhodium produced by electroplating or evaporation is exceptionally hard and is used for optical instruments

used for jewellery

industrial catalyst

rhodium is used as part of the catalytic system in car catalytic converters, used to clean up exhaust gases to some extent
*Biological role*
Rhodium has no known biological role. It is a suspected carcinogen.
*Natural abundance*
Rhodium is the rarest of all non-radioactive metals. It occurs uncombined in nature, along with other platinum metals, in river sands in North and South America. It is also found in the copper-nickel sulfide ores of Ontario, Canada.
Rhodium is obtained commercially as a by-product of copper and nickel refining. World production is about 30 tonnes per year.


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