- [Cory] This tiny piece of metal
is almost twice as valuable as gold.
It's palladium, a rare metal which has seen a spike
in popularity and price nationwide,
and in the process has created a new class of car thief.
- [Reporter] Thieves are still on the lookout
for those catalytic converters in vehicles.
- As soaring demand creates a palladium crunch,
the race is on to find a new alternative
before the auto industry really ends up in a bind.
- [Tom] So like this right here,
it'd probably be worth $50 right now.
- Just the dust itself? - Just the dust itself.
It's really kinda crazy when you look at it.
- [Cory] The most expensive dust I've ever touched.
Palladium was first discovered by William Wollaston in 1803
and belongs to a group of metals
known as platinum-group elements, or PGEs.
These elements are known for their high melting points,
resistance to corrosion,
and most notably their great catalytic properties.
- [Paul] When we want to control chemical reactions,
a lot of times the problem is they're too slow.
So a catalyst is remarkable at accelerating reactions.
- Paul Dauenhauer is a professor of chemical engineering
at the University of Minnesota.
He walked us through the basics of heterogeneous catalysis,
or how a metal like palladium
can speed up the reaction of a gas.
- [Paul] We can actually take molecules
and stick them to a surface.
When they stick on the surface
they can rearrange very quickly,
and then once they've rearranged they come back off.
That surface that enables that rearrangement of molecules
is called a catalyst.
So it helps the reaction speed up,
but it's not actually used in the reaction
as a reactant or a product.
- Palladium has been used in cars
since stricter emissions standards
were first introduced in 1975.
It's built into a device called a catalytic converter,
which tackles a bunch of toxic emissions all at once.
- [Paul] So out of your engine, when it's operating,
you have three things coming out that we don't want.
Unburned fuel is one problem.
Another one is carbon monoxide
from fuel that hasn't been fully burned.
And then the third one is, when it takes in air,
the nitrogen in the air will actually oxidize also
and make NOx, which, if it comes out of your car,
will make acid rain.
- So when these gasses pass through
the honeycomb structure inside a catalytic converter,
the nanoparticles of palladium and other PGEs inside
work to burn up or break down the toxic gasses
into less harmful ones.
Catalytic converters have led to a significant drop
in carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions
since their adoption in the 1970s.
And the more palladium they use,
the more effective they are.
With more manufacturers trying to reduce
their impact on the environment
and with stricter emissions regulations
coming online in places like Europe and China,
the demand and cost of palladium is skyrocketing
and there just isn't enough to go around.
The U.S. only mines around 14,000 kilograms
of palladium each year,
but uses over 90,000 kilograms annually.
And with only two major suppliers of palladium in the world,
Russia and South Africa,
there's a real bottleneck in getting the metal
to where it's needed most.
That hunger for palladium
has created some new wrinkles in the market,
some above board and some less so.
- With these catalytic converters
exposed to the public so easily,
where someone can slide underneath
and cut them with a portable Sawzall,
it's gonna be a problem.
- Tom Buechel owns Rockaway Recycling,
a scrapyard in New Jersey.
He buys hundreds of catalytic converters every single day
from scrappers around the country
and eventually sends them off
to be refined for their precious metals.
This guy sent the whole muffler.
So we got South Carolina, California.
Tennessee.
Wisconsin.
Florida.
Each catalytic converter
could contain between two and three grams of palladium each.
Tom is one of many recyclers
who account for over 85,000 kilograms of palladium
recycled in the U.S. each year, nearly all of which comes
from scrapped catalytic converters like these.
It's the kind of business that grows
when an industry is looking
for every last available scrap of a precious metal.
- [Tom] My risk has only increased over time
because all of these cats
used to be worth 150-200 bucks each
and now they're worth triple.
- [Cory] He's got a knack for looking
at any catalytic converter
and quickly estimating its value
based on its make, model, and condition.
- [Tom] This is off of a (beep).
This is off of a (beep).
These are off of (beep).
- [Cory] So those are both (beep) down there?
- Yep. - Okay.
- [Tom] This is a (beep).
I mean, this is a $900 cat.
- Wow.
Now, we're bleeping the car manufacturers' names
because there's one thing we have to talk about,
and that's catalytic converter theft.
As the price of the precious metals
inside the converters continues to rise,
so does the rate at which they're stolen.
In just the past three years alone,
monthly catalytic converter thefts in the U.S.
have increased dramatically,
from more than 108 thefts per month in 2018
to over 1,200 a month in 2020.
How do you address that here in your recycling process?
- We've dealt with a lot of authorities.
We helped them catch a lot of people that were stealing them
because as a certified recycling establishment,
we're taking driver's licenses from everyone.
And if someone doesn't want to give it to us,
then we're not gonna buy their material.
- The price of palladium is the driver of this whole story.
I mean, this is the most palladium
my producer said we could afford for this video,
which really makes you wonder
why we're relying on such a scarce material
for important everyday tasks.
We don't really have a choice right now,
but that might change.
- [Paul] The replace of precious metal
is an active area of research.
So we say we want to use Earth-abundant materials,
or things where we have so much of it
that the cost is incredibly low.
Not only in catalytic converters,
but lots of other applications
where precious metals are important.
It's a very big challenge.
- Another approach is to use materials
like palladium more efficiently,
increasing their surface area
by doling them out atom by atom.
- [Paul] That's the ultimate minimum amount
of metal you could use in these.
And it's a very simple principle.
If you have a particle of material,
the smaller you make it
the more external surface area you have
per amount of that material.
And so if you can make these incredibly,
incredibly small particles,
you get the most bang for your buck.
- But engineering palladium at the atomic scale
also comes with its own fresh challenges.
- [Paul] A single atom is much less stable than a cluster,
and that's much less stable than a bulk metal.
So a lot of research is going into
how we get a single atom
of palladium or rhodium or platinum
to stay in place and keep its functionality
over a long period of time.
It's a very exciting area of research.
- Now, there's still a ways to go
before this technology is ready
for any practical application,
but a world full of zero-emissions electric vehicles
is still a ways off too.
So for now, if you own a gas-powered car,
keep an eye on your catalytic converter
and don't get caught up in the palladium crime wave.
So you guys are never going to believe this,
between the time that we shot this video and posted it,
the catalytic converter on my dad's truck was stolen
from the lot in which he was getting work done.
The thief hit four cars. His was one of them.
So the threat is real.