# more platinum than u think in convertors!



## jjohio (Jul 30, 2011)

People that think there is a gram or less in a convertor???...Come on, its simple math!!...Large G.M convertor sales to scrap guy for 130...He turns around and resells it for lets say 160, and than before it finds its home there is 200 invested in it.....Platinum is worth 57 dollars per gram....do i need to go any further........


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## Platdigger (Jul 30, 2011)

That may be true, but there are many converters less valuable than a large GM.
Plus, there should be some pd and bit of rh in that verter.


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## jimdoc (Jul 30, 2011)

You are forgetting rhodium and palladium also.

Jim


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## ProSmelter (Aug 8, 2011)

Hi Guys...Im new here and its my first reply....I do scrap cars and work a full time job....BUT..I have recently started questioning the ACTUAL value of the PM's in these converters...my buyer pays between $9-$345 per catalytic converter...like the sying goes, if hes paying that whats his buyer paying him???? I have read ALOT on the converters in the last year or so and found some interesting fun facts....seems the government here changed the laws about contents of the catalyst in 1993 lowering the levels needed to a bare minimum of just over 3.1 grams of PM. HOWEVER before that time it seemed it was a tossup set by manufacturer standards and model/ country of origin.( I have seen claims that up to 60 grams were used in certain makes/models but have not seen concrete evidence) Basically, if you want to send your cats out to be refined, for the best yeild I would send the foreign cats from BEFORE 1993 to the refiner. I have been trying to devise a "safe" (quote unquote) way to do it at home crudely and have a few ideas. Maybe seperate it down to the 3 big ones, the highest priced and highest melting point metals....palladium, rhodium and platinum. Then send that concoction to the refiners for refining. Sorry for the long post but im 32, make other people TOO much money (and have for a long time) and I think its time to make some money for me!!! I just need to start on a small scale and find some basic test materials, like aqua regia and test acids for Platinum and Rhodium/Palladium. I have recently started aquiring computers and cell phones for the gold rec :?: overy process but wont touch any acids till I have a few pounds of cpu's, cell phone boards and ALOT of pins.....LOL. Any help would be greatly appreciated..Thanks!!!!!!!!


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## jimdoc (Aug 8, 2011)

Lazer Steve sells a DVD you should find interesting.
Here is his website; http://www.goldrecovery.us/
It is #3 on the list
-Fundamentals of Platinum and Palladium DVD- Video Guide to Processing Catalytics and Other Pt and Pd scrap 

Also if you look through the Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Iridium, Osmium, & Ruthenium section you will find a lot of information.

Jim


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## skippy (Aug 9, 2011)

Prosmelter, unfortunately for those of us who would like to get into this business there's a lot of people with money and expertise in the cat business, and they are in competition with each other already. I think that even a lot of the guys running around buying the whole converters imagine that the guys up the pyramid are making big dollars on the cats they bring them, but I don't think it works that way.

I think you've got a good idea to concetrate on finding cats which have higher content in relation to payouts. It seems to me cats are grouped into broad categories that might allow you to cherry pick by year or exact style.


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## ProSmelter (Aug 9, 2011)

Well fellas, from my point of view heres how it looks....my main core buyer has bought and sold cats for the last 5 years from me...this guy buys a new toy cummins like 3 times a year, cars and trucks for his wife and never leaves the house unless hes running his cats purchased from scrappers and shops.Im not trying to be nosy but I hve a hunch hes making a pretty good profit off cats and hes one of the highest paying buyers in my area. 5 years ago this guy was scrapping crs same as me and now says theres not enough of return in it! I just want to be able to send a test batch to a refiners and see the numbers on paper, thats all!!! Anyone here try this yet??? Thanks


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## skippy (Aug 9, 2011)

Sounds like a plan. Make sure your numbers are there and make sense before getting ahead of yourself. Get a good sample of material, maybe all one grade like large gm or regular domestic ford, have it assayed and see what the numbers say.


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## Dirtdiggaler (Aug 11, 2011)

You can send a sample to a fire assayer and find out how many grams for around 40 dollars and if you want a assay and ICP for how many grams of each metal its around 175 dollars . Action mining has a system that is easy to use and they do the testing you need to find out if its worth your time and money. www.actionmining.com


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## bubba (Oct 16, 2011)

ProSmelter said:


> Hi Guys...Im new here and its my first reply....I do scrap cars and work a full time job....BUT..I have recently started questioning the ACTUAL value of the PM's in these converters...my buyer pays between $9-$345 per catalytic converter...like the sying goes, if hes paying that whats his buyer paying him???? I have read ALOT on the converters in the last year or so and found some interesting fun facts....seems the government here changed the laws about contents of the catalyst in 1993 lowering the levels needed to a bare minimum of just over 3.1 grams of PM. HOWEVER before that time it seemed it was a tossup set by manufacturer standards and model/ country of origin.( I have seen claims that up to 60 grams were used in certain makes/models but have not seen concrete evidence) Basically, if you want to send your cats out to be refined, for the best yeild I would send the foreign cats from BEFORE 1993 to the refiner. I have been trying to devise a "safe" (quote unquote) way to do it at home crudely and have a few ideas. Maybe seperate it down to the 3 big ones, the highest priced and highest melting point metals....palladium, rhodium and platinum. Then send that concoction to the refiners for refining. Sorry for the long post but im 32, make other people TOO much money (and have for a long time) and I think its time to make some money for me!!! I just need to start on a small scale and find some basic test materials, like aqua regia and test acids for Platinum and Rhodium/Palladium. I have recently started aquiring computers and cell phones for the gold rec :?: overy process but wont touch any acids till I have a few pounds of cpu's, cell phone boards and ALOT of pins.....LOL. Any help would be greatly appreciated..Thanks!!!!!!!!


 
your numbers are way off, but thats really of no consequence compared your idea that you can profitably execute your plan of small scale, or even large scale wet chemical recovery. 
I say this not to discourage you, I just wish someone had set me straight 15 years ago, when I began this journey.
I have heard the above plan more times than I can count in those 15 years.....hell, it was my plan at one time.
The truth is that nobody, I will say that one more time, nobody has done it on a commercial scale, at least not in the U.S.
I attend the IPMI meetings, and have friends that do this business from coast to coast. If someone had figured it out, and many, many have tried, I would know about it.
Fact is .......you can get rich from catalytic converters.....you can.Just not the way the people on this board always seem to want to go about it. It's alot of hard work to build up the base you need to generate some decent volume, and it takes money, real money if you are going to be competitive.
What you are assuming, and that's all it is, is an assumption is that because the values add up so fast with this material, that the guys further up the food chain must somehow be cutting a fat hog. That's not the case for several reasons, first, unlike alot of other scrap, catalytics are very repeatable, that is , if you know the assays, its a simple calculation for valuation, and it is linear. I never send material to the smelter without knowing exactly what my assays will come out like because I sample it here before we ship.....simple, no guesswork. Of course the smelter is going to make something, but when you calculate how much, you realize you are better off spending that time buying more material than trying to process catalyst.
Another reason that there are not the crazy amounts of money being made by processors, like me, and by the smelters is because the business has become very established. If you are getting 10, 20, 50 converters at a time, well those are the crumbs that fall off of the table. The real volume is purchased by processors like us who do 15,000 + units a month. Take your best number that you can come up with, and quote my biggest supplier who sells me 1500 units a week. I bet you you won't beat my prices, thats why he has sold to me for years.
At this point someone is saying "but I only get a few cats so it makes sense to go ahead and do it myself" these people are the ones who have never tried to market 1 or 2, maybe 5 ounces of PGM's that you would produce from your leach. try it......did they even return your phone call? if so, how much did they quote? 80% ? 85% ? 85% would be high......why do that when you could get more than 85% from a company like ours, and sell your converters intact. andy.


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## nickvc (Oct 16, 2011)

I have to say that I would take Bubba at his word, I have read virtually all of his posts and he knows the convertor business inside out and has tried every method to refine them himself all to no avail, the big boys have it down pat and if you know what you send them,powder and assay, you can't be scammed. The downside as Bubba pointed out is you need to know how much each convertor is actually worth, lots of assays, many thousands of dollars invested, to be able to buy and hold the necessary amounts to get the top rates from the refiners, even more hundreds of thousands of dollars, and to be able to fund further purchases while you wait for the settlement to arrive, maybe millions of dollars. I'm sure you can work your way into this business on his model but it's going ti take time and a lot of very hard work and investment before you start to actually see any surplus cash. 
The small time refiner/home refiner can't get all of the PGMs out but can make a profit if they buy right but in volume I really can't see how you can compete with the huge arc furnaces and even more expensive set ups they have to recover virtually all the values in one process. The clever members on here are probably doing as well as is possible in refining the convertors and getting a decent return but the time taken and the residues with PGMs in them which are beyond the average set up to recover are the killer for a commercial set up.


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## skippy (Oct 16, 2011)

There's also wastes. That's another big consideration. You end up with a lot of volume.
The solution will contain too much lead, nickel, zinc and aluminum to dispose down the sewer. So you need a filter press, or to have the solutions trucked away.
Then there will be the leached ceramic to dispose of and maybe a filter cake. 

Anybody know the typical costs these days for sludge, dry, and liquid wastes?


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## samuel-a (Oct 16, 2011)

bubba said:


> Of course the smelter is going to make something,



bubba

Can you elaborate more details about the smelting process of this kind of meterial?

I take it, that smelting alumina/ceria/zirconia substrate would require immense quantities of flux and probably similar amounts of collector... or may i get it the wrong way?


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## Dan72ccx (Oct 16, 2011)

People that think there is a gram or less in a convertor???...Come on, its simple math!!...Large G.M convertor sales to scrap guy for 130...He turns around and resells it for lets say 160, and than before it finds its home there is 200 invested in it.....Platinum is worth 57 dollars per gram....do i need to go any further........

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: 

I have done Mercedes twin converter and i got 10.5gr Pt from it , BMW twin convertor metalick one 18.7gr Pd :roll: , BMW single 2008 7.5gr Pt so fare  :roll:


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## bubba (Oct 18, 2011)

samuel-a said:


> bubba said:
> 
> 
> > Of course the smelter is going to make something,
> ...




Problem here is the melting temps, A typical natural gas tilt and pour furnace ain't going to get the 3,100 degrees + that you need for PGM's. The material is rich enough, a collector is not needed. Flux is minimal, I have seen limestone used most frequently, fed with an auger conveyor.


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## triffid (Nov 18, 2011)

I may be wrong or my info may be old but I had read somewhere that 20 cats will net you about an ounce of pt.Just posting it here to get comments.


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## bubba (Nov 20, 2011)

triffid said:


> I may be wrong or my info may be old but I had read somewhere that 20 cats will net you about an ounce of pt.Just posting it here to get comments.


 20 aftermarket cats will net you about 1/5 of an ounce of palladium.....................be careful


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