Production of the Platinum Metals in Soviet Russia

22

Production of the Platinum Metals in Soviet Russia“Entering again the world platinum m arket after the Revolution o f 1017, our country not only had to re-establish the fo rm er output o f platinum but also to re-organise its extraction on the basis of modern technology. ”

O. E. Z V Y A G I N T S E V , 1 9 2 7

For many years before the outbreak of the first world war the p latinum industry in Russia was dominated by the E uropean refiners. T he two large producers, Count Demidov and Count Schuvalov, were supplying them with large quantities of native metal from the Urals, while a small refinery and workshop had been set up in 1875 in St. Petersburg jointly by Johnson M atthey and Desmoutis Quennessen to meet the very limited Russian needs for platinum laboratory apparatus. This control of the industry by foreigners was much resented by both the intelligentsia and the politicians, and in 1910 a conference was arranged by the Ministry of T ra d e and Industry, presided over by Professor Kurnakov, to consider the question of the refining of p latinum in Russia. Recommendations were made, but no action was taken, and then in 1913 the Ministry imposed a duty of 30 per cent on exported platinum and a year later, on the outbreak of war, prohibited its export altogether. In the same year the setting up of a refinery was authorised and this was built at Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlosk), the centre of the Ural mining industry. T he Quennessen company was to take on the financing, Heraeus to provide a suitable engineer, and Johnson M atthey to design the buildings and plant, to provide the m ethods of refining and to prepare and ship the equipment. T he first local collaborator was the largely uncommitted mining concern, the Nikolai-Pavdinsky M ining Company, which was to find the site and to build the refinery. M any delays occurred, however, and it was not until after the outbreak of w ar in August 1914 that building began. Operations began on a small scale in 1915 with N. N. Baraboshkin, a former student of Kurnakov’s at the Mining Institute of St. Petersburg, as manager, and by the end of 1917, when all Russian mineral

403

“A History of Platinum and its Allied Metals”, by Donald McDonald and Leslie B. Hunt

© 1982 Johnson Matthey

One of the American built dredges in operation in 1923 to extract native platinum from the alluvial deposits in the river beds of the Urals. The operating season extended only from May until the end of November. During the next five years several larger dredges were installed, the crude platinum being transferred to a refinery built at Sverdlosk

resources were nationalised, ou tp u t had increased to some 30,000 ounces a year. T he refinery was then taken over by the new government under the terms of a state monopoly for the production, refining and marketing of platinum. The general disorder during the first years of the revolution greatly reduced production, however, which fell to only a round 6,000 ounces in 1922 ( 1 ).

A Research Institute for the P la t in u m M etalsDuring the war the shortage of platinum for the contact process for the manufacture of sulphuric acid h a d caused great concern - the large Tenteleev organisation in St. Petersburg h a d been producing acid by this process since 1900 - and in 1915 a commission was set up for the study of all Russian natural

resources, with a section devoted to p latinum under Kurnakov. A n appeal was m ade to Lev Aleksandrovich Chugaev, Professor of Chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg, and as well as urging the creation of a state monopoly he proposed the establishment of a research institute for investigations on all the platinum metals, their methods of refining and analysis, their alloys and their co-ordination compounds. After th e revolution this scheme came to fruition and in 1918 Chugaev was appointed director of the newly formed Institute for the Study of Platinum and other N oble M etals (2). Th is organisation at once set out to provide the refinery with improved methods, as well as conducting many

404



Lev A leksand rov ich C hugaev 1873-1922

Born in Moscow where he studied at the University, in 1908 Chugaev became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the I niversity of St. Petersburg. succeeding Mendeleev, and remained there until his early death at only forty-nine. Apart from his researches on platinum complexes he proposed the establishment of an institute for comprehensiv e research on the platinum metals, a project that came to fruition in 1918 when he was appointed the first Director of the Platinum Institute of the Academy of Sciences in Petrograd. now Leningrad

researches on the chemistry of the platinum metals, particularly on their coordination compounds. Their results were published in a jo u rn a i established in 1920, the Izvestia of the Platinum Institute, the first and for three decades the only journal devoted exclusively to the p latinum metals (3). Unfortunately Chugaev died in 1922 at the early age of 49 and he was then succeeded by Kur- nakov who continued to stimulate the refinery m anagem ent at Sverdlovsk and to contribute to the study of the co-ordination compounds of the p latinum metals. In 1934 the Platinum Institute, the Institute of Physicochemical Analysis and the General Chemistry Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences were combined into the Institute of General Chemistry in Moscow, with Kurnakov as Director. O n his death in 1941 this was re-named the N.S. Kurnakov Institute in his honour. A n appreciation of his life and work has been compiled by Professor Kauffman and will be published shortly (4).

Chugaev’s proposal for a nationalised industry had, however, already been adopted with the formation late in 1921 of a commercial trust, The State Association of Platinum M iners of the Urals, abbreviated to “ U ra lp la tin” . The new organisation found that nearly all the old dredges used to excavate the

405



IPya Il’ich C hernyaev

1 8 9 3 - 1 9 6 6

A f o r m e r s tu d e n t of C h u g a e v ’s, in 1918 C h e rn y a e v jo in e d th e In s t i tu te fo r the S tu d y of P l a t i n u m o f th e A c a d e m y of Sc ien ces in P e t r o g ra d a n d r e m a in e d th e r e un tii h is d e a t h , su c c e e d in g K u r - n a k o v as D i r e c to r in 1941. T h e r e he c a r r i e d ou t i m p o r t a n t w o rk on the re f in in g o f th e p l a t i n u m m e ta ls a n d th e i r p r e p a r a t io n in a s t a te of high p u r i ty . H e w as a lso c o -e d i to r of the Izvestia o f the P l a t i n u m In s t i tu te f rom 1947 un t i l 1955 w h e n it ce a s e d p u b l i c a t ion

alluvial platinum from the river beds had ceased to operate for lack of spare parts, and new American dredges were purchased, beginning in 1925 and continuing for several years. They could operate only from M ay to December as they were forced to stop working when the accumulations of ice became too great (5).

In 1921 a representative of J o h n so n M atthey, M r. A. B. Coussmaker, then the com pany’s mining engineer who had considerable experience in the p latinum fields in the Urals, secured an interview with M axim Litvinov with a view to obtaining supplies of native metal for refining. Litvinov, later the Soviet Ambassador in London and th en Foreign M inister in Moscow, emphasised, however, that his government was well aware of the extent to which the world was dependent upon Russian supplies of platinum and that they firmly intended to do the refining themselves.

Refining and separation of the platinum metals progressed in the Ekaterinburg plant under the guidance of Baraboshkin and with the close co-operation of

406



A K A ; i K M H H H A Y K C C C I»

M H C T H T V T 0 B 111 R fi 11 H E O P r i H H H E C K O f i Z M M M H

H3BECTHJÏ

CEKTOPA IL1ATHHLIH flPyniX BJArOPOAHblX m eta jlio b

(ochob&hu «1. A. 4 y r \K B b L M b 191» r.>

r io j PEJUKIlHEâH. C . KVPHAK OBA h O. R. iJBH I’UHUKBA

BhinycK ;s

INSTITUT DE CHIMIE OKN'ÉKALE

ANNAUX

DU SECTEUR DU PLATINEET DES AUTRES MÉTAUX PRÉCIEUX

(Fondées par L. CUGAJKV « 1018)Kedig.^ |» r X. S. KURNAKOV « O. K. ZVI.UHXCKV

LIVRAISON 1.1

M31ATKJII.CTBO AIUAEMIHI H.WK CCCP

Kurnakov and his staff in improving the processes; high purity platinum, palladium, iridium and rhodium were successfully produced, and a state factory in Moscow carried out the fabrication work.

By 1924 negotiations with the Russians yielded an agreement for Johnson M atthey to take the whole of their output of refined metal for the following year, estimated at 70,000 ounces. This was shared with the other European platinum companies, and further quantities were made available on the same basis in 1926 and 1927, but then a marketing company was set up in Berlin by the Russian government for the direct disposal of their metal.

T h e D iscovery o f P latinum in SiberiaExtraction of the alluvial p latinum in the Urals continued, and a detailed survey of the mineral resources there was undertaken by a leading Swiss geologist, Professor Louis Duparc, with a Russian assistant, M arguerite Tikanovitch (6), but it was realised that a search must be m ade for the primary

T o p u b l i sh th e re su l t s of r e s e a rc h in the newly f o u n d e d In s t i tu te for the S tudy of P l a t i n u m a n d o th e r N oble M eta ls C h u g a e \ f o u n d e d a j o u r n a l , the fzvestia. first p u b l i s h e d in 1920. T h is in c lu d e d a m ass ive se r ie s of p a p e r s by C h u g a o h im se l f a n d by his co l leagues o n th e c h e m is t ry a n d m e ta l lu rg y of all the p la t in u m m e ta ls . T h i s show s the cover of th e v o lu m e fo r 1936. with th e ti t le g iven in F re n c h , a n d th e n e d i te d by N. S. k u r n a k o v a n d O. E. Zvyag in tsev . T h e jo u rn a l ceased p u b l ic a t io n in 1955

407



After th e d iscovery of a large n i c k e l - c o p p e r o r e bod y in n o r th -w e s t e r n S ib e r ia th e e x t r a c t ion of th e p l a t i n u m m e ta ls f ro m t h i s so u rc e b e g a n to in c r e a s e . In th e e a r ly p e r io d b e fo re W o r ld W a r II th e m in e ra l w as s h i p p e d to M u r m a n s k a n d t h e n to a r e f in e ry a t M o n c h eg o rsk w h e re th e n ickel w a s r e f in e d e lec t ro ly t ica l ly . th e p l a t i n u m m e ta ls a c c u m u la t in g in the a n o d e r e s id u e s a n d then b e in g s e p a r a te d a n d re f ined in d i \ ¡dually

rock from which these water-borne deposits emanated. In 1919 while prospecting for coal, Russian geologists discovered a large nickel and copper ore body in the far north-west of Siberia an d in 1924, after some samples had been sent to Leningrad, this was found to con ta in the platinum metals. Some years passed before any further action was taken and then in 1935 the N oril’sk Mining and Metallurgical Combine was established to exploit this large body of mineral. First of all a railway had to be b u il t to link the future mining operations with the port of Dudinka on the River Yenisei, open only for four months of the year. By 1938 the railway had been completed despite the most harsh Arctic conditions, and extraction operations could begin. Initially the ore was shipped from Dudinka to M urm ansk and then to Monchegorsk where a nickel refinery had been opened in 1938, but in 1940 N oril’sk had its own smelter and refinery and became a vital source of nickel a n d copper during the second world war. T he ore is first treated along similar lines to those in use at Sudbury, smelted to a matte and the final refining of copper a n d nickel carried out by electrolytic methods. From these two last operations the anode residues containing the platinum metals are flown to a refinery bu ilt at Krasnoyarsk, the capital city of the region nearly a thousand miles to the sou th on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Here the individual p latinum metals are separa ted and refined. By far the major part of the Russian output of platinum m eta ls now comes from this source.

408



In m o re r e c e n t years a la rge s m e lt in g com p lex has b e e n b u i l t a t Noril sk to re f in e both nickel a n d co p p e r . T h e final a n o d e re s id u e s a r e then t r e a t e d a t a p l a t i n u m ref inery a t K r a s n o y a r s k , nearly a t h o u s a n d m iles to th e so u th

T he ore-body at N oril’sk is, unlike the rich p latinum mineral from the Urals, much richer in palladium than in platinum, while the fact that these metals emerge only as by-products from the extraction of nickel and copper means that production is governed by the dem and for these two base metals. O u tp u t figures for Russian platinum are most difficult to establish, but production has increased many times since the opening of the N oril’sk operations in 1940 and for a time constituted the greater proportion of world supplies until it was surpassed by the increasing output from the South African mines, to be reviewed in the next chapter.

R eferences for C h a p te r 22

1 E. K. Fritsman, Ann. Inst. Platine, 1927, 5, 23—742 G. B. Kauffman, Platinum Metals Rev, 1973, 17, 144—1483 G. B. Kauffman, Platinum Metals Rev., 1974, 18, 142—1484 G. B. Kauffman, Platinum Metals Rev., forthcoming5 J. B. Bubb, Eng. and M in. J ., 1928, 126, 284-2866 L. Duparc and M. N. Tikanovitch, Le Platine et les Gites platiniferes de l’Oural et

du Monde, Geneva, 1920

409



Arthur B lakeney Coussm aker 1885-1974

A fte r gaining valu ab le e x p e r i e n c e in the p la t in u m m in ing a rea of the U ra ls p rio r to the 1914—1 91 8 war C o u ssm ak e r was ap p o in ted a D irector of Joh nson M atthey and d e t e r m in e d to seek a m ajo r new sou rce of native p la t in u m to e x p an d th e i r refin ing and fa b r ic a t in g activi ties. T h e discovery of the M erensky Heef in 1924 m ad e it possible for h im to ach ieve this object ive

F rom a p o r tra it b> I ) a \ id J a e g e r in the possession o f J o h n so n M a tth e \



Documents

Production of the Platinum Metals in Soviet Russia