this batch of soluble rhodium trichloride is worth over $350,000. stan polichnowski is an industrial chemist with eastman kodak and the coinventor of their rhodium-based catalyst. we don't purchase rhodium metal. we need to purchase a soluble precursor that we can use to make our catalyst. there are companies that will take the metal and convert it to something that we can use directly in our system. an example of that is rhodium trichloride, which we can use to make our catalyst. and it's a dark crystalline material, soluble, so we can make our homogeneous catalyst. from the rhodium precursor, we, in our process, produce an organometallic compound. this is an example of an organometallic compound, and by that i mean it has a central metal atom, with organic ligands attached to it. and in this case, the red are oxygen atoms, the blue are nitrogen atoms of pyridine rings. if the rhodium is so expensive, how can it be profitable to use the catalyst in such a large-scale reaction? the answer lies in the fact that catalysts are not used up in reactions.