Australian scientists on the verge of creating cheap liquid platinum catalyst

Australian scientists have found a way to use platinum dissolved in gallium to create a cheap industrial catalyst, according to labnews.co.uk.
In an article published in the Nature Chemistry, scientists from the universities of New South Wales Sydney and RMIT Melbourne said that using trace (i.e. extremely small) amounts of platinum in liquid form in combination with liquid gallium helps avoid the need to apply much higher temperatures typically required in the chemical engineering process, thus allowing platinum to be used as a potentially scalable industrial catalyst while avoiding the financial and environmental costs associated with using the metal in its solid state.
“Traditionally, solid state platinum needs to comprise 10% of the catalytic system required to create chemical reactions. With a melting point of nearly 1,770°C, its use can be prohibitively expensive. However, when combined with gallium in a minute quantity – one thousandth of the proportion of solid state platinum needed in a catalyst – liquid platinum becomes soluable,” labnews.co.uk said.
Gallium, on the other hand, melts at temperatures below 30°C, which is 60 times lower than the melting point of platinum in the solid state. High temperature is needed only to convert platinum to a liquid state before dissolving in gallium.
As a result, it becomes possible to use much less platinum to create catalysts, while low-temperature technology will reduce the cost of the production process.

Vladimir Malakhov, Rough&Polished