Commodity Online
“When is your platinum day of love?” blares the ad.
Well, now the same question is posed to a different segment, though this time distributed across a diverse spectrum of industries ranging from automobiles to factories. The precious metals like palladium and platinum may experience huge demand, not from jewelers, but from the said segments! And it is going to be huge: $2.5 billion!
Let me come to the point: As the pollution levels surge contributing to phenomena like global warming, technological innovation is helping curb it in ways previously unimaginable. The HDD (Heavy Duty Diesel) catalyst system, employing platinum and palladium as main catalysts, is helping industries and automotives to check pollution levels right at the point of origin.
Rise of pollution control catalyst
The rising air pollution has become a serious health issue everywhere.
According to assessment by Kseniya Lvovsky South Asia Environment Unit, World Bank, the health damage from exposure to the high levels of air pollution in 126 cities worldwide--where the annual mean levels exceed 50 ug/m3—has revealed that the ill effects may result in 130,000 premature deaths, over 500,000 new cases of chronic bronchitis and many more health hazards each year.
Kseniya Lvovsky collected cost data from six most polluted cities around the world and computed the cost of environmental impacts. This reached $3billion, of which more than 60% got spent on health.
On behalf of the facts above, the EU government has tightened the vehicle emission legislations, especially on the diesel vehicles.
Once this happened, technology came to the rescue by actively pitching Heavy Duty Diesel (HDD) catalyst that has proved to be beneficial in controlling the emission rate of the diesel vehicles.
HDD Catalyst System
A catalytic converter (or System) is a device used to convert toxic exhaust emissions from an internal combustion engine into non-toxic substances.
The HDD catalyst main component is designed using precious metals like Platinum and Palladium. These metals have the ability to absorb gases like oxides of nitrogen and carbon and are predisposed to control pollution emission from vehicles without disturbing the cost and performance advantages of a diesel engine.
The catalyst with more palladium content is having better efficiency than platinum; but the efficiency of both metals have been high compared to ordinary filters.
Major Users of Catalysts
The major users of the catalysts are Japan, US and EU where pollution regulations maintain high standards with emission rates closely watched. There, HDD catalyst has been proven good for the vehicles and is popular. This in turn has increased the demand for platinum and palladium in those markets.
The catalyst is not only used in vehicles but also in factories fuelling pollution in huge scales.
Given the opportunity, the HDD catalyst market can triple to around $2.5 billion in sales excluding precious metal demand from jewellery segment.
Japan is the major consumer of the precious metals in this regard accounting for more than 50% of the consumption in the western countries.
Cost Factor
The HDD catalyst comes at a premium to ordinary catalyst and filters as it uses expensive metals like Palladium and Platinum. As a result there are only few vehicles in US and EU which comes with company fitted catalyst due to the cost of the metals.
But when the cost involved in treating the disease caused by air pollution is thought of…may be it is worth investing in such a technology.
So, when is your platinum/palladium day of love?
