Platinum and Palladium Reserves, Lifespan, Quantities Mined (PGMs)

     While platinum is a shiny silvery metal, palladium is slightly darker and has a gray tone.

     Again, platinum is denser and heavier than palladium. In fact, as you see above table, platinum is the densest and heaviest among the four precious metals.

     While gold has a density of 19.50 grams per cubic centimeter, platinum has a density of 21.45 g/cm3. The densities of the others are in the table.

     This density can be expressed on a volumetric and larger scale as follows: 100 tons of gold has a volume of 5.13 cubic meters, while 100 tons of platinum fits in a volume of 4.66 cubic meters. However, the same amount of silver requires a volume of 9.52 cubic meters, which is nearly twice then platinum.

     In the third row, there are the amounts of these four precious metals, which we can call the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, that have been mined on earth to date. You must have noticed how little Platinum and Palladium have been mined since the beginning of history, with amounts of around ten thousand tons each. We will talk about the reasons for this a little later.

     The analogy of an Olympic pool is often used for these precious metals. When we consider it from this perspective, we understand that the amount of platinum currently mined would only fill 14% of an Olympic pool, while palladium would fill 18%. Palladium is mined less, but it takes up more space because its specific gravity is almost half that of platinum.

     The amount of gold mined so far can fill about 3 Olympic pools. For silver, this amount is equivalent to 44 Olympic pools. However, since silver is a metal that has not been recycled to a large extent in history and has been lost due to reasons such as corrosion, the amount of silver currently found on earth can be reduced by half, to 22 pools.

     The first row of the present table shows the amount of precious metal in ppm, that is parts per million, or milligrams per one kilogram of soil.

     We should examine the second row of our table in this context. The abbrevation of PGMs means Platinum Group Metals.

     The PGMs are platinum (Pt), palladium (Pd), rhodium (Rh), ruthenium (Ru), osmium (Os), and iridium (Ir). The six metals are often found together, but their relative abundances can vary considerably.

     Since they are found together, their production in the mines also occurs simultaneously. Therefore, the reserves are given collectively as PGMs, not separately for platinum and palladium. The total known PGMs reserve is around 70,000 tons.

     As you can see in the last column of the current table, most of the world's PGM reserves are in the Republic of South Africa. The total reserves, which appear to be 71,000 tons worldwide, are estimated to increase to 100,000 tons after possible discoveries in the future.

     When we look at the production figures, it is understood that the annual production of Palladium in mines alone, excluding recycling, is 190 tons and the annual production of Platinum is 171 tons. The annual production of gold and silver is much higher than these two metals.

     We know that platinum is one-third of palladium in the earth's crust. Considering today's production figures, it can be said that platinum has a lifespan of 83 years and palladium 225 years. These numbers correspond to 16 years for gold and 24 years for silver.