Platinum Group Metals - Reserves

Country Reserves Tonnes Reserve base Tonnes 

Russia entered the platinum story late, but today is a big producer. However, it is not the deposits in the Urals that are worked. Three important deposits are linked with nickel and copper ores, one in Norilsk, east of the river J enisej in Siberia and two on the Kola peninsula, Petschenga (Petsamo) and Monchegorsk. Canada has important deposits of a similar type in the Sudbury region. 

The biggest mining of platinum-group metals occurs in South Africa. In the so-called Bushveld complex in Transvaal the metals are concentrated in big reefs , the Merensky Reef, Platreef and UG2. In Table 32.3 the metal content and metal type in the Merensky Reef are compared with data from the Canadian Sudbury and the Russian Norilsk deposits. 

The Stillwater mine in Montana is the only primary palladium-platinum producer in the United States. Its ore is rich with a content of 19.9 g/tonne of Pd-I-Pt in the proportion 3 1 

The two metals platinum and palladium are of the greatest economic importance among the PGMs. The other four - rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium - are obtained as by-products. 

---

Total known world resources of platinum-group metals have been variously estimated as between 68,000 (7) and 96,000 metric tons (8). Assuming the former estimate and 1979 levels of demand, these reserves should be sufficient to supply the Western world weU into the twenty-fourth century. Reserves and relative proportions of the PGMs in the larger deposits are given in Tables 5 and 6. Relative amounts of the PGMs vary from deposit to deposit. 

Palladium occurs in combination with platinum and is the second most abundant platinum group metal (pgm), accounting for 38% of pgm reserves. The USSR produces over 50% of the world s palladium, which is more than double that produced in South Africa. Two major sources of the metal are braggite, a mixed sulfide of platinum, palladium and nickel, which contains 16-20% palladium, and michenerite (PdBi3). 

The platinum-group metals (Ru, Os, Rh, Ir, Pd and Pt) are rare (Figure 23.1) and expensive, and occur together either native or in sulfide ores of Cu and Ni. Three sites of mineral deposits in the former Soviet Union, Canada and South Africa hold the world s reserves. The main source of ruthenium is from wastes from Ni refining, e.g. from pentlandite, (Fe,Ni)S. Osmium and iridium occur in osmiridium, a native alloy with variable composition 15-40% osmium and 80-50% iridium. Rhodium occurs in native platinum and in pyrrhotite ores (Fei S, n = 0-0.2, often with <5% Ni). Native platinum is of variable composition but may contain as much as 86% Pt, other... 

---