History

Palladium was discovered by William Hyde Wollaston in 1803.^[3][4] This element was named by Wollaston in 1804 after the asteroid Pallas, which had been discovered two years earlier.^[5] 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 have many negative side-effects, and was later replaced by more effective drugs.^[6]

Palladium's affinity for hydrogen led it to play an essential role in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment in 1989, also known as cold fusion.

In the run up to 2000, Russian supply of palladium to the global market was repeatedly delayed and disrupted^[7] because the export quota was not granted on time, for political reasons. The ensuing market panic drove the palladium price to an all-time high of $1100 per ounce in January 2001.^[8] Around this time, the Ford Motor Company, fearing auto vehicle production disruption due to a possible palladium shortage, stockpiled large amounts of the metal purchased near the price high. When prices fell in early 2001, Ford lost nearly US$1 billion.^[9] World demand for palladium increased from 100 tons in 1990 to nearly 300 tons in 2000. The global production of palladium from mines was 222 metric tons in 2006 according to USGS data.^[10] Most palladium is used for catalytic converters in the automobile industry