With the rise of the sharing economy, sharing bicycles, electric vehicles, and automobiles has become a new industry, but this has also given some criminals an opportunity to take advantage of it.
Among them, the "hardest hit area" is the most expensive shared car, and the news about the theft of shared car parts in the past two years is not uncommon, and it is an economic loss of millions at every turn.
Picture note: Cockroach thieves who stole the ternary catalytic converter were caught
In December 2020, Guangzhou Baiyun Police Station cracked a case of extraordinarily large auto parts theft, three cockroach thieves specialized in stealing a part of a shared car, committing more than 200 crimes in a month and a half, involving an amount of more than 1.8 million yuan.
In March last year, the Hunan Loudi police cracked a six-person gang that had committed a mobile case, also specifically for sharing car parts, and they committed more than 30 crimes in Loudi in only 2 days, involving an amount of more than 100,000 yuan.
Figure note: Ledger - Ternary catalytic converter
In fact, the auto parts stolen by these cockroach thieves are all ternary catalysts, and regarding the theft of ternary catalysts, the report rate of these two years has reached an unprecedented peak, there are car repair shop owners who covet small profits, and there are dozens of professional teams that have acted nationwide.
So what exactly is a ternary catalyst, and why are there so many such thefts in the past two years?
Why should a three-way catalytic converter be installed on the car?
In fact, the ternary catalyst is a vehicle exhaust emission control device, which can convert the toxic gases and pollutants in the exhaust gas of the internal combustion engine into less toxic pollutants through the catalytic redox reaction.
Note: Three-way catalytic converter for a 1996 car
At the end of the 19th century, there were only a few thousand fuel vehicles in the world, but some engineers in France realized the potential risk of car exhaust gas, so they designed a component for car exhaust purification.
The element was as simple as coating an inert material with metals such as platinum, iridium and palladium and sealed in a bimetallic cylinder patented by Eugene Hudley, a French mechanical engineer and catalytic refining expert.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the rapidly developing United States was shrouded in smog, and Hoodley came to the United States in the 1930s and in Los Angeles to study the role of automobile exhaust in air pollution.
Photo note: Smog days in Los Angeles in 1984
In 1973, thanks to the efforts of several engineers, the first automotive exhaust gas catalytic converter was put into production, but at this time, the catalytic converter only combined oxygen with carbon monoxide in the car exhaust gas and unburned hydrocarbons, and then discharged carbon dioxide and water.
However, there is also a very deadly nitrogen oxide (NO x, including nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide) in the exhaust of the car, which is the culprit of acid rain and smog.
Due to the limited emission requirements, the catalytic converter of the car now basically needs to deal with these three exhaust gases at the same time, so it is called a three-way catalytic converter.
Note: Platinum group metals
Platinum group metals play a role
Scientists have discovered that several platinum group metals (including platinum Pt, palladium Pd, osmium Os, iridium Ir, ruthenium Ru, rhodium Rh six metals) are much stronger than other metals in catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides.
In the earliest automotive exhaust gas catalyst, in fact, the most important is a metal - platinum, which can effectively catalyze the oxidation of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.
Note: Native platinum nuggets
However, platinum also has some disadvantages, that is, it needs to be particularly effective when oxygen is abundant, so it is generally the preferred catalytic metal for diesel applications.
Of course, palladium is also an excellent catalyst for chemical reactions involving hydrogen and oxygen, but it reacts with the lead in leaded gasoline and then gradually decreases, so platinum, although not particularly good, can only use it.
With the disposal of leaded gasoline, the use of palladium catalysts is now no less than platinum.
Note: 1 gram of rhodium powder, cylinder, and sphere
The catalyst for nitrogen oxides is rhodium and ruthenium, ruthenium is relatively cheap, but ruthenium is not as stable as rhodium, and the oxide is still easy to volatilize, so even if rhodium is very expensive, it can only choose rhodium.
Now, the three main platinum group metals in the three-way catalytic converter have been determined, that is, rhodium, platinum and palladium, and the cockroach terrier stealing the three-way catalytic converter is actually mainly stealing these three platinum group metals.
So you might also be wondering how much is the ternary catalyst on your car worth?
Platinum group metal content in automotive ternary catalysts
In general, in a three-way catalytic converter, the ratio of platinum to rhodium is 5:1, while the ratio of palladium to rhodium is 7:1. In a typical small car, the total platinum group metal content of the three-way catalytic converter is about 1.5 grams, compared to about 15 grams in a large truck.
There don't seem to be a lot of platinum-group metals, do they?
However, these metals are still quite expensive, and the price has soared particularly sharply in the past two years.
For comparison, the price of gold today is 368 yuan per gram, while the price of platinum is 199 yuan per gram, palladium is 370 yuan per gram, and rhodium is 3883.5 yuan per gram, which is almost 10 times that of gold.
Although the content of platinum group metals in each ternary catalyst is quite small, if calculated at this price, the platinum group metals in the ternary catalyst of an ordinary car are worth about 1,000 yuan, and if it is a large truck, it is possible to have tens of thousands of yuan.
In addition, platinum group metals are very rare, as of 2020 the global reserves of platinum group metals are 69,000 tons, so there is an interesting fact, even if all the platinum group metals we know have been mined, it is not enough to add a three-way catalyst to all fuel vehicles.
Note: Platinum group metal ore
And mining platinum group metals is not an easy task, every 1 ton of platinum group metal ore contains only about 10 grams of platinum group metals, interestingly, six types of platinum group metals will basically appear in the same ore.
Note: World platinum group metal reserves in 2020
The most fatal thing is that about 95% of the platinum group metals are stored in the crust of South Africa, and the epidemic has seriously affected the mining of ore, so the price of these metals has been soaring for two years.
According to a website data, the price of rhodium on January 4 was 3376.5 yuan per gram, but it rose directly to 3883.5 yuan on the 6th, and the price surge was the reason for the significant increase in the number of cases of stealing car ternary catalysts in the past two years (not only in China, but also in the world recently).
At last
80% of the demand for palladium and rhodium is in the automotive industry - that is, in the ternary catalytic converter, and the ternary catalyst is under the car chassis, sometimes welded, sometimes fixed with screws, for thieves is still relatively easy to get started, owners must pay more attention.
In addition, the higher the chassis of the car, the more it needs to pay attention to being stolen, one is that the chassis is high and the thief is easy to get started, and the other is that its platinum group metal content is also higher.
When the three-way catalyst is stolen, the car warning light will light up, if it is not lit, you need to pay attention to whether the sound and exhaust of the car engine are abnormal, early detection and early alarm!