Catalytic Convertor Recovery Data

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Check out this Ebay listing;
http://cgi.ebay.com/How-to-buy-different-types-of-catalytic-converter-scrap_W0QQitemZ170454351303QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item27afdefdc7

I can't see how he gets away with the $18.95 shipping charge when he emails it to you. And he says right in the ad that it is to save Ebay fees. He deserves to have it posted online for free (if its worth it).

Jim
 
When I was going to sell my book on Ebay, I found that they now have rules against selling purely downloadable "digital delivery" material except as a listing on a Classified Ad. For a normal listing, you now have to ship something to to the customer, like a DVD. This guy, in China, is selling a bunch of different books as pdf email attachments and is breaking the Ebay rules, as I understand it. Maybe the shipping charges allows him to circumvent this but I doubt it.
 
What is the approximate purity of the PGMs in %, extracted from cats using Steve's way?
Is it necessary to use hydrogen torch for melting the PGMs? I can not find any in my country :(
How bad will it be if I use propane/O2 torch? Will it be better if I use a home made mini-firebrick furnance with a PGM melting dish inside and a propane/O2 torch (or maybe two of them :twisted: )?
 
plamenppp said:
What is the approximate purity of the PGMs in %, extracted from cats using Steve's way?
Click to expand...

First off you should delete the new thread you started “cats again”, as asking the same question in 2 places only muddies the forum.

Part of why you may have not received a response to this is it makes no sense (at least to me). Do you wish to know the percentage of PGM in a converter? They are all different. Do you want to know the percentage of PGM that is soluble? Do you wish to know what percent is PGM vs. a contaminate in such a solution. I would guess that you are asking about finished purity, and that depends on how you choose to precipitate them from the chloride solution Steve uses as well as how adept you are at doing it. Not understanding the question makes it hard to help.

As to torches, since your profile does not show your country it is hard to advise as to what alternatives are available to you. Generally speaking though the melting of PGMs for sale will only hurt you. Buyers are not inclined to take your word for it as to purity which means they will have to re-digest them in order for them to determine PGM content, this is very slow for bars and ingots (boil a chunk of platinum in AR and you will understand). For this reason the best way to sell it as elemental is as a sponge or selling the salts from precipitations.
 
Oz, i think we must be lucky here in the UK as bars with a reliable assay report are easy to trade,i suppose the existence of the Assay Offices probably helps.Having read Harolds experience over his PGMs i wouldnt trade a gram of metal without an assay to stop the refiners or as GSP calls them the last liars claiming non existent water, contaminants or melting losses :roll:
 
Oz said:
plamenppp said:
What is the approximate purity of the PGMs in %, extracted from cats using Steve's way?
Click to expand...

I would guess that you are asking about finished purity, and that depends on how you choose to precipitate them from the chloride solution Steve uses as well as how adept you are at doing it.

As to torches, since your profile ...
Click to expand...

I am asking about finished purity, not about contents of PGM in a cat. Most of the goldsmiths I know have never seen platinum of rhodium or palladium. They don't know how to work with it to make jewels but they want to buy platinum with purity higher than 98%. And as long as they have no market for pt jewels they will resell the in Turkey, I think.

I am from Bulgaria - only 7 000 000 people. It is hard to find many goods from our market. I had to import some of the equipment. I couldn't find a vacuum filtering system anywhere. I ordered the cone flask from Germany and a friend promised me to deliver a funnel from a school (where they do not make experiments in class anymore). I will have to make the rubber gasket myself. I still haven't found the handpump.
 
nickvc said:
Oz, i think we must be lucky here in the UK as bars with a reliable assay report are easy to trade,i suppose the existence of the Assay Offices probably helps
Click to expand...

Selling based on assay would certainly change things as long as your customer trusts the assay office you used. For many though the cost of a proper PGM assay takes much of the profit away here in the US unless you are dealing in a decent number of ounces at a time.
 
plamenppp said:
Oz said:
I am asking about finished purity, not about contents of PGM in a cat
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

In that case it would help to know how you plan on precipitating your values from solution. Not knowing that it is impossible to even guess what purity you may achieve. I believe Steve uses zinc as his first step in removing values from the solution, in which case you will have mixed elemental PGMs.
 
Oz said:
nickvc said:
Oz, i think we must be lucky here in the UK as bars with a reliable assay report are easy to trade,i suppose the existence of the Assay Offices probably helps
Click to expand...

Selling based on assay would certainly change things as long as your customer trusts the assay office you used. For many though the cost of a proper PGM assay takes much of the profit away here in the US unless you are dealing in a decent number of ounces at a time.
Click to expand...
Oz i use a company called Guardian Laboratories, i think a gold platinum palladium assay is about £50 or $75 and the assay is trusted by the local refiners so the cost is well worth while if you can get a good melt.They would assay for you if you can get them samples and im sure payment could be arranged somehow , the price over here is around 93% of spot for that sort of melted bar.
 
Plamen,

Here is a link to a Hand Vacuum Pump that I use.

It's the same one that Lazersteve uses in his DVD's

http://tinyurl.com/y3lsq9n

Regards
Buzz
 
Nick,
Thanks for offering to set me up with them but as I had mentioned small amounts are not worth having assayed. Thankfully I have private buyers for large and small amounts.

Being able to sell PGM at 93% of spot is not bad but if you sell an ounce at a time your assay fee of $75 becomes an additional loss of almost 14% of spot for palladium and 4.4% for platinum. This gives you a final payout of 88.6% for platinum and 79% for palladium. It may be better to build some trusting relationships with buyers that will not require assays.
 
Oz said:
Nick,
Thanks for offering to set me up with them but as I had mentioned small amounts are not worth having assayed. Thankfully I have private buyers for large and small amounts.

Being able to sell PGM at 93% of spot is not bad but if you sell an ounce at a time your assay fee of $75 becomes an additional loss of almost 14% of spot for palladium and 4.4% for platinum. This gives you a final payout of 88.6% for platinum and 79% for palladium. It may be better to build some trusting relationships with buyers that will not require assays.
Click to expand...
Oz if you only have one element to assay its a lot cheaper but i never went that far with mixed PGMs and gold i just melted it together and traded a mixed bar,i must admit if you trade quantities of material that you personally have refined then your approach may well be the best one,when i was refining full time virtually all my material was melt and assayed before refining actually began, basically to allow transparency for both the customer and myself,i guess old habits die hard.
 
nickvc said:
I guess old habits die hard.
Click to expand...

You did what was right for you and your customer in your circumstance, we live in different countries, perhaps we gave some people perspective in our dialog.

I have to ask, how black is your sky?
 
The sky in the UK is the usual blue but the temperatures are definately lower than normal.
Can't see the ash cloud at all from here.

All the aircraft are still grounded too.
 
Buzz said:
The sky in the UK is the usual blue but the temperatures are definately lower than normal.
Can't see the ash cloud at all from here.

All the aircraft are still grounded too.
Click to expand...
Yeah as Buzz stated its business as usual here,no planes in or out of the UK well not for the next 24 hours but its just like having BA on strike :lol: The offer for assaying was meant for anyone interested Oz,you obviously are very happy with your present deal, and i understand that you have a good relationship with your buyers and everyone is pleased so why change,i must admit you can spend a fortune chasing an extra dollar :cry: May i say i have no financial interest in Guardian Laboratories so it matters not to me if people use them or not.
 
Story on palladium use in converters;

http://www.kitco.com/reports/terry_june42010.html


The increase in industrial trucks will be important, too, he said, because they need more palladium in their catalytic converters. Light vehicles use about 4 grams of palladium in their emission control devices, while larger vehicles such as a Ford F-150 or a Chevrolet Silverado use about 16 grams. "So the loading of palladium quadruples for the average vehicle with bigger motors," Swinoga said.

Jim
 
hey guys.. been a while. :)

going back to the very first post in this thread, I've been reading the information on that link and it looks like from what I am reading, the honeycomb type converters are a cordierite matrix coated in aluminum oxid with the pgm's on the Al2O3 surface.... just a thought, but if you could get under the pgm's, could you not digest the Al2O3 substrate (possibly with something alkaline such as lye)?

perhaps the pgms would then seperate from the cordierite h/c and fall to the bottom at which point they could be leached in the usual way...

if that's possible, I would think it would be easier to leach a small batch of whatever flakes off the honeycombs than submerging the whole h/c in whatever leach method you prefer..

the bead type apparently look to be solid Al2O3 which ought to be even easier to digest..


just looking at this from a different angle and thinking outloud, so don't mind me... (I tend to do that.. :mrgreen: )
 

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