Platinum Metals Review - Volume 32, Issue 3, 1988

Corrosion of steel structures in Arctic waters can be even more severe than in warmer environments. It has now been reported that with careful attention to detail during all stages of design, fabrication, installation and operation, impressed current cathodic protection systems, incorporating platinised anodes, can provide an economic and effective means of preventing corrosion on both ships and off-shore structures.

Over the past twenty years catalysts containing platinum group metals have become the preferred means of limiting the polluting emissions of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles. However, from time to time methods of exhaust control are proposed which appear to offer a viable alternative to autocatalysts. Europe has been slow to adopt emission control standards for vehicles which is, perhaps, surprising bearing in mind that European catalyst manufacturers have been producing autocatalysts and European car producers have been fitting them to vehicles destined for the U.S. and Japanese markets for over fourteen years. This article gives the background to the suggested alternatives, which are in the main different approaches to lean burn operation, and to other engine based controls. It explains why, for the foreseeable future, a platinum-containing autocatalyst will still be required to ensure that the cleanest possible exhaust is emitted under all driving conditions.

One of the lesser known members of the Chugaev school of inorganic chemists, Lebedinskii devoted more than four decades to the synthesis and analysis of co-ordination compounds of the platinum group metals, particularly those of rhodium, iridium, and platinum. He developed a new industrial method for purifying rhodium, and he carried out studies of the extraction and refining of the platinum metals and their separation from dilute solutions and salts.