Mediterranean Sustainability Partners
Jun 19, 2026 · 43 min · 8 segments
In this podcast , we invite Dr. Gilad Lando back on the podcast , this time with his colleague, Dr. Elliad Silcoff, to discuss PGMs, a fascinating and informative conversation in three parts : How…
Gilad LandoGuestEliad SilcoffGuestEllen WassilinaHosthave the floor sure well pgms are very interesting metals because they're not aluminum or or iron or the metals that you build bridges and trucks and stuff out of they're sort of the metal that exists in the background uh i like to joke that uh pgms are um are sort of like the the backstage crew at a cinema or at a theater you don't really see them but if they weren't there then wouldn't go on, the theater would fall to pieces.
They're very minute amounts, but on the other hand, play huge parts in places you can't even imagine, in your car, in the energy market, in the hydrogen economy, which has become very, very important for the green ecosystem and for a wide range of other activities.
So PGMs, it's an acronym for platinum group metals, where it's basically platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, sometimes osmium.
They're sort of a group of metals that are hidden in the center of the periodic table.
set of characteristics where they're all extremely rare and we can talk a little bit more later about how rare they actually are and how difficult they are to isolate i've
was wondering i was going to ask you too where are they on the periodic table they're hidden you say behind that
yeah they're they're in the middle of the transition metal groups um on the fourth and fifth row um so they're below aluminum, sorry, they're below iron, they're below zinc, cobalt, all the metals that you typically know.
They're not far from gold, they're not far from silver, but they have very different behaviors from gold and silver.
They tend to be very dense, far more dense than what we'd normally have, a density of about four times that of water.
So if you can imagine picking up a liter of water, if that liter was made out of PGM, it would weigh about four times that amount.
have the floor sure well pgms are very interesting metals because they're not aluminum or or iron or the metals that you build bridges and trucks and stuff out of they're sort of the metal that exists in the background uh i like to joke that uh pgms are um are sort of like the the backstage crew at a cinema or at a theater you don't really see them but if they weren't there then wouldn't go on, the theater would fall to pieces.
They're very minute amounts, but on the other hand, play huge parts in places you can't even imagine, in your car, in the energy market, in the hydrogen economy, which has become very, very important for the green ecosystem and for a wide range of other activities.
So PGMs, it's an acronym for platinum group metals, where it's basically platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, sometimes osmium.
They're sort of a group of metals that are hidden in the center of the periodic table.
set of characteristics where they're all extremely rare and we can talk a little bit more later about how rare they actually are and how difficult they are to isolate i've
was wondering i was going to ask you too where are they on the periodic table they're hidden you say behind that
yeah they're they're in the middle of the transition metal groups um on the fourth and fifth row um so they're below aluminum, sorry, they're below iron, they're below zinc, cobalt, all the metals that you typically know.
They're not far from gold, they're not far from silver, but they have very different behaviors from gold and silver.
They tend to be very dense, far more dense than what we'd normally have, a density of about four times that of water.
So if you can imagine picking up a liter of water, if that liter was made out of PGM, it would weigh about four times that amount.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
