A new device developed by scientists in South Africa that is the size of a kitchen toaster may potentially revolutionise the platinum jewellery industry.

The application, which is capable of heating platinum to its melting point of 1800 °C, is currently being tested at the University of Cape Town's (UCT) Centre for Materials Engineering.

Originally developed by Irshad Khan of the Centre for Instrumentation Research at the Cape Technikon, the device has been used to process novel platinum alloys.

The application's ability to rapidly heat platinum is now being touted as a potentially useful alternative to the usual method of melting, the blowtorch.

Jewellers say that the potential to control the heat rather than simply trying to judge it, could yield far less incidence of contaminated metal.

Mr Khan explained to ChemWeb magazine: “By generating heat in the material itself, we have developed a system that is faster (it takes only one minute to melt platinum using the furnace compared to eight minutes using a blowtorch), cleaner and safer.”

The platinum toaster can handle and melt about 150 g of material in contrast to the 40 g usually managed by a blowtorch.

The first prototype is expected to be ready for testing in industry by March 2004.