# Metallic honeycomb??



## KCGreg (Oct 17, 2009)

I just got in two cats and when I opened them up, the honeycomb was not the ceramic type but instead is some kind of rolled metal. It's very thin and I cut a piece off with tin snips and it dissolved in room temp HCl but I'm hesitant to drop the whole thing into acid for fear that something that large would create a boil over. Not to mention whatever metal (I'm guessing aluminum or tin) it is would certainly make recovery time consuming and expensive to drop with with zinc. Has anyone ever come across these? Will the standard HCl/clorox method work?

I'm thinking I might cut it into smaller pieces and do it a little bit at a time then test for any Pd and discard as usuall if there are no pgm's while saving anything left on the bottom for further treatment when comlete. I don't know. I'm hesitant to try it without some insight from more experienced peeps. Usually I can find .9999% of what I need to know by using the search button here on the forum but I find myself in that 1% range on this one. Any ideas?


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## butcher (Oct 17, 2009)

? are you sure this is not a muffler?
most cat's are honey comb or beads, as far as I have heard.


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## jimdoc (Oct 17, 2009)

Catmax's site has been down for a while, but they showed a picture of one these metallic honeycomb cats. They were priced very low compared to the beads or honeycomb. I don't know if that is from difficulty in processing or smaller amounts of pgms or both reasons.
I myself have yet to see one in person. I had some other links, if I find them I will post as they were on an older computer I switched out.
Jim


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## butcher (Oct 17, 2009)

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5971255/claims.html
http://www.catalyticexhaust.ca/products_page4.html

Guess they are making them metalic core.

seen where copper would make good catalyst instead of platinum group, but illegal in USA.


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## Platdigger (Oct 17, 2009)

I call them "wire" or "stainless" , I believe they started putting them on certain cars in the early 2000s.

Never tried to proccess one. I will be interesting to see how you come out.


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## KCGreg (Oct 18, 2009)

Ok, now the wire converter makes sense because I have seen them on pricelists (with very low prices). A friend of mine across town said he has two of them and they came off of subaru imprezas but he hasn't processed his yet either. On the other hand, a wire makes me think of just that, a wire wrap but thisis more like a sheet than wire. it actually looks like corrugated metal thats wrapped tightly into a cylinder. When I get it completely out of the shell I'll cut it into some smaller pieces and try the method Steve uses in his video with a half or quarter section and maybe try another with HCl and see what happens there and when I take my metal in to the refiner in the morning I'll have him scan a piece and see if his spectrascope-thing?? will give a reading on it's composition. Thanks for the help, I guess I'll play around with this one a bit and hopefully have some kind of results to share. Thanks Again!


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## Platdigger (Oct 18, 2009)

Since this material will disolve in hcl, using hcl and chlorine will put your values into solution with all that iron.

Also, just using hcl will put at least some of the pd into solute...also not a good option...


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## butcher (Oct 18, 2009)

can you determine base metals used? and how these are made, plated or mixtures? this can help you come up with a plan of attack.


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## qst42know (Oct 18, 2009)

Here is a patent for base metal catalysts. There may be other alloy combinations possible.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3867313.html


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## butcher (Oct 18, 2009)

his doe's not sound like the stainless steel mesh if disolved in HCL, 
next I think determining if it is the aluminum/iron/chromium type as in patent above, 
these almost sound like electric heaters, or same materials as heating elements, or after burners ?
notice in patent above the etchant HCL and ferric chloride?
and platinum , palladium plated on.
can one not try to deplate then reverse of how they were plated?
could by chance hook up high current to this like a heating element getting almost to melt point Oxidizing the wire under PGM coatings and flaking them off? 
how much valueble metals? be fun to play with.


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## T3sl4 (Oct 19, 2009)

Remember it's stain_less_, not stain *proof*. Stainless steel dissolves quite excellently in all mineral acids (except nitric, which passivates it). I don't see how Pd could go into solution; as long as you have an excess of metal, you'll have plenty of nickel, iron and especially chromium available to reduce it.

The OP speculated aluminum or tin, but those are absurd of course; neither can withstand exhaust or cat. temperatures. Copper is a distant possibility, but vulnerable, especially with operating temperature so close to the melting point. Stainless is the first cheap, plentiful and moderately refractory metal.

I don't think they'll be plated, that would have approximately zero surface area. It's got to be some sort of porous ceramic enamel. Might be analogous to the wash they put on the ceramic cats., but formulated for the expansion rate and bonding of metal instead (since stainless steel is coated in chrome oxide).

Tim


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## markqf1 (Oct 19, 2009)

My cat guy tells me that they're SS, but the few samples I have here are highly attracted to a magnet.
I have'nt tried to process any, because of the extra work that would be involved with removing the other metals.


Mark


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## jimdoc (Oct 19, 2009)

The normal converter cases are said to be 409 stainless and they are magnetic.I never bothered to see how much they are worth because I don't get to many and just throw them in with my steel.
Jim


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## KCGreg (Oct 20, 2009)

Well I took it into my refiner yesterday afternoon and he scanned a little piece of it. No luck there, it didn't read anything. I will take a look at the link posted above bcause I want the info but I think this is something that will be collecting dust until I get "hungry" enough to try and go get it. I dont remember seeing this in anyones posts but did anyone have an idea of what vehicles primarily used the SS or tin honeycomb? I would like to avoid buying them whenever possible. Thanks alot for the input though. It sounds like it is metal, I'm just not experienced enough to tangle with it yet. I have some info though I'm post in other areas about cats and platinum so make sure to check those out.


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## jimdoc (Oct 20, 2009)

Here is a link that shows one at the bottom of the page;
http://www.catalytic-converters.com/
another link;
http://www.recycalytics.com/automobile-catalytic-converters.html
http://recycalytics.com/index.html

They seem to be called "foil" converters.
Jim


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## markqf1 (Oct 20, 2009)

Good links Jim,
My cat guy says they go for top dollar to the smelter.
Of course, none of us are smelters. :lol: 

Mark


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## jimdoc (Oct 20, 2009)

I have a book called; "Materials Aspects in Automotive Catalytic Converters" Edited by Hans Bode. In this book they say that for recycling these they are either;

1- Melted with the whole case (the foils are brazed into the case when they are made, not easy to decan like the honeycombs).
This brings the problem of all the metals mixed together with the base metals. It says they are 17-22wt%Cr,5-8wt%Al, plus small amounts of other metals and balance Fe. My guess is only the big guys will be set up to do this.

Or;
2-Shred, grind or hammermill the material to get the washcoat loose as this will contain the most precious metals. And treat the foil and mantle seperately.

I will just put these on the side myself to deal with later if I get any,
unless I get in the experimenting mood.
Jim


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## jimdoc (Dec 26, 2009)

Here is an interesting link that shows how one company deals with the metallic foil converters;

http://www.duerec.com/en/film/

Jim


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## KCGreg (Dec 26, 2009)

That's a pretty cool video. Wouldn't it be nice to go and work there for a year or so to learn the process? I still haven't touched the two that I have. I gave them a seconds thought last week when I stumbled on them while digging for something else but I still haven't gotten around to working on them yet. As soon as I finish here I will go down and cut a sliver off so I can take it in to the refiner later this coming week and find out what metal or alloy the honeycomb is made of. When processing cats I usually try to do one at a time and I leave them whole. Would it be a bad idea to section the metallic ones off and place pieces in with whole cats? I had also considered cutting it down and just keep digesting in HCl until there was just residue left but to me that doesn't make much more sense than using nitric to recover the gold from gold plated jewelry. using the hammermill idea made sense and I have access to a large one but that's just it, it's a large one. Having seen it in operation I don't know that running just 1 cat through it would be feasible. I mean, it would grind it to shreds to be sure but the bin that catches the fines is like 4X3X2 and that would have to cleaned meticuously before hand and after for a very little bit of material. Hammermills also generate a great deal of dust that escapes unless you have a blower on them and the one I rent does not so I would suffer more losses there on top of what I'll lose on my own. So I think I'll just run a bit in this week and see what the x-ray shows and I'll let you know how that turns out. Sneaking them in to other recoveries in small quantities seems to make the most sense for me at this point with the few that I have. Cats were never something I wanted to do large scale so I know I won't be running into a whole lot of them. On the other hand, I never know what tomorrow will bring and it would not be a disadvantage to know how to handle that type of scrap by itself. Like you though, they probably won't get messed with as a whole until I feel ambitious enough to tackle it. I will make it a point though to get a sample scanned this week and get back to you about the results. maybe if we keep taking one step at time when we do get ambitious we'll have have plenty of knowledge to help back us up.


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## KCGreg (Dec 29, 2009)

I took a sliver (weighs approximately 1 gram) of that converter in this morning and it came back with the following metals:
68.51% Iron
15.85% Chromium
4.67% Lanthanum
3.06% Cerium
2.48% Neodymium
2.24% Zirconium
1.26% Manganese
.98% Praseodymium
.85% Platinum
.059% Rhodium
That's an awful lot of iron and very little PGM's, I know enough to know I don't know how to handle it, so for me, I think these will just have to sit.


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## Lou (Dec 29, 2009)

That's not too bad!

At your numbers, that's 8.5 g of Pt per kilogram. I could reclaim that all day and make a killing.

*Are you sure it wasn't 0.085 %?*


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## KCGreg (Dec 30, 2009)

No, I just double checked, it reads .852% Pt. and .059%Rh. I have two of them I bought from the same guy, not sure if they came off the same car or not. If you're numbers are right, that is a fair amount of platinum, how would you handle this particular type of converter?


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## markqf1 (Dec 30, 2009)

There's no way that a 2.2 gram converter has 8gm of pt.
Even if it's a diesel.
Sorry to be skeptical, ... there is a flaw in the data somewhere.

Mark


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 30, 2009)

> I took a sliver (weighs approximately 1 gram) of that converter in this morning and it came back with the following metals:


Lou and the others are right - .85% for Pt is absurd.

A "sliver" of this material, which is horribly non-homogeneous, would be a very inadequate sample for the Pt and Rh. For the other constituents, it is probably reasonably accurate, since they make up the base metal alloy. It sounds like the analysis was done with x-ray equipment. If so, the results would be worthless for anything that was not part of the alloy, such as the Pt or Rh. I haven't read the patents but, like the ceramic type, I'm sure they are just sitting on the surface as a coating and are the first things the x-rays detect. In this case, I can understand how you could get huge numbers for Pt and probably Rh. Here again, unless the material is homogeneous, with the Pt and Rh as part of the alloy, any direct results by X-ray would have *zero* quantitative value.


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## jimdoc (Dec 30, 2009)

I agree, the values seem to be in the wash coat. Most of what I read they shred the material to get the wash coat to fall off, then it is collected. You can't do that with monolith honeycomb or beads because they would just crumble to powder along with the coating of PGMs. Getting the wash coat to fall off the foil or wire seems to be the best way to go with these. Maybe some type of vibration set up would work to get the coating to come loose, and drop off.
Jim


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## Lou (Dec 30, 2009)

As I've said time and time again... x-ray analysis is damn near worthless unless you have a nice smooth surface that isn't oxidized or plated or this or that. As Chris and I have both said, sample preparation is key--if the sample is not representative of the whole lot, then you're going to get results that are not realistic, or even useful.

The sample (and the assay) are only as useful as the context in which they are taken.


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## KCGreg (Jan 3, 2010)

Well, I think I know how to handle these particular pieces of scrap.....sell 'em to the scrap yard. I would have like to have given them a shot but not without the right means of handling them, thanks a bunch for your input!


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## philddreamer (Jun 12, 2011)

Butcher wrote:" Are you sure this is not a muffler? Most cat's are honey comb or beads, as far as I have heard."

I had a person bring me a cat for me to recover the pgm's. But I was surprised when I opened it, to see this. I tried a sample of the "blanket" in AR, but after
testing with stannous, negative. As I understood from the information here, maybe the values are on the screen? Maybe test some of the screen next?

Thank you!

Phil


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## philddreamer (Jun 12, 2011)

After running 3 tests, I got a + for palladium with stannous in the inside perforated plate. 8)


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## bubba (Jul 30, 2011)

markqf1 said:


> There's no way that a 2.2 gram converter has 8gm of pt.
> Even if it's a diesel.
> Sorry to be skeptical, ... there is a flaw in the data somewhere.
> 
> Mark





You are correct Mark, foil converters, which are 316 stainless by the way, must exhibit the same catalytic reaction as their ceramic counterparts, therefore the loadings are similar to the ceramic, and no where near that rich. 
A hammermill is the most cost effective form of processing, Duessman in Germany pioneered the process. A wet chemical processes on these makes one hell of a mess, believe me, huge sloppy mess.


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## skippy (Jul 30, 2011)

You would definately need a lot of acid, they are heavy buggers. Also you would have a solution chock full of chromium and nickel, which would be a pain int the neck for disposal or treatment.


bubba said:


> A hammermill is the most cost effective form of processing, Duessman in Germany pioneered the process. A wet chemical processes on these makes one hell of a mess, believe me, huge sloppy mess.


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## rusty (Jul 30, 2011)

KCGreg said:


> I just got in two cats and when I opened them up, the honeycomb was not the ceramic type but instead is some kind of rolled metal. It's very thin and I cut a piece off with tin snips and it dissolved in room temp HCl but I'm hesitant to drop the whole thing into acid for fear that something that large would create a boil over. Not to mention whatever metal (I'm guessing aluminum or tin) it is would certainly make recovery time consuming and expensive to drop with with zinc. Has anyone ever come across these? Will the standard HCl/clorox method work?
> 
> I'm thinking I might cut it into smaller pieces and do it a little bit at a time then test for any Pd and discard as usuall if there are no pgm's while saving anything left on the bottom for further treatment when comlete. I don't know. I'm hesitant to try it without some insight from more experienced peeps. Usually I can find .9999% of what I need to know by using the search button here on the forum but I find myself in that 1% range on this one. Any ideas?



Figure out what the mesh is made from then use a electricity cell to remove the metal leaving the PGM/s behind as a sludge on the bottom of your cell or use an anode bag to collect the values.

When your electrolyte becomes fouled, strip the solution of the offending metals with a carbon anode - SS cathode. This way you can reuse the acids.

I have never processed a metallic mesh cat, but this is the route I would investigate. Electricity is your friend.

Regards
Rusty


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## Dan72ccx (Aug 7, 2011)

Hi
I done some metallic honeycomb will post some rethults soun and i have one more metallic honeycomb to do from BMW.
Will get some picture for yours and how much Pt i have from it
Thanks


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## greatgems (Aug 17, 2011)

How much PM value are you getting from these after market cats thanks


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## greatgems (Aug 22, 2011)

im assuming the pt and pd are on the surface could a iodine process remove them youd have to use 10 cats at a time but could get the great results if its just a plating the use leaving you the ss to resell since most buyers and sellers of these cat sell them for scrap ss prices thanks


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## freechemist (Aug 23, 2011)

Cited from greatgems post:

_"im assuming the pt and pd are on the surface could a iodine process remove them youd have to use 10 cats at a time but could get the great results"_

I heavily doubt that an iodine-leaching-process will function. PtJ2 and PdJ2 both are nearly insoluble compounds, even in the presence of excessive iodide.

freechemist


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## greatgems (Aug 23, 2011)

do you know that iodine works on only noble metals works great on silver plating better on gold and rd and pt plating so i would assume the platings on the surface of the cats. anyone willing to sell me 10 of them for that standard 6 dollars each i will see what and iodine bath will do its only 60 bucks see what the results are will post it here thanks


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## skippy (Aug 23, 2011)

Greatgems, I don't think you need ten cats to see if the process works. You should be able to do something like 
this: process a small sample with your iodine procedure, cement the pgms, and then redisolve cemented metals in a calibrated volume of HCL-H2O2.
Then vigorously attack the sample, foil and all in AR, then cement the residual pgms, and then redisolve the residual pgms in the same volume of HCl-H2O2
as you did for your cemented metals from your iodine treatment. From the intensity of color of your solutions, and from the intensity of your stannous tests, you should be able to get a good idea of whether your idea is working, and without the risk of time, chemicals, and money that you might incur running a totally speculative process on a largish scale. That's how I see it anyhow. 

I've got a couple of stainless cats, and when I cut one open, I'd be happy to send you a smaller sample to try your hand at. I expect to cut one open open in the next week or so.


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## rusty (Aug 23, 2011)

Recently got a small load of cats in, on two there are these small round canisters with what looks like steel wool inside, are these some kind of cat or junk.

Regards
Rusty


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## greatgems (Aug 24, 2011)

Well Skippy the iodine process is quite simple it just pulls and clements the pm at the bottom of the test tub due to the cost of the iodine i rather do 5-10 its only 60 bucks 20 for iodine and water then i filter out the iodine all the pms that dropped to the bottom leaving the ss as its not attacked. then have the pm melted into small nugget or if you like to filter it another level that be great is youd like to partner up with this process where are you in ontario thanks im in Niagara


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## skippy (Aug 24, 2011)

Ok, I still don't know how you are so certain it will work like you think it will, unless you have done it before.
Are you thinking of trying something like in the thread 'iodine with a twist' ?


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## greatgems (Aug 24, 2011)

i have done gold Silver and also rhodium plating before and it worked find the only thing i like to partner up for is refining our PT and Pd that will be mixed together obviously thanks 

I know how effective iodine is if done right with pm plating and theres now way they would mix the pm into the ss it makes no sence if you understand the purpose of the pm in the converter and its placement so ya i like 10 because i know it will work just need to know in a decent sampling how much pm will be pulled off per converter and how profitable it is because metal converters go for scrap value thanks Joshua


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## skippy (Aug 24, 2011)

Josh, 

The PGMs in foil cats aren't a plating that can fall off the underlying metal. They're in an alumina wash that is just like a ceramic comb, except the wash is baked onto foil instead of cordierite.
Unless I am missing something the PGMs wont just fall off, they'll have to be dissolved, which is a bit of a trick when there is that much base metal foil. Maybe in the right conditions iodine can do it, but I don't currently have any reason to think so. Also stainless cats do sell for more than stainless value, at least eventually. They are grouped into categories some folks grade them as x pound (ie 3 pound, 5 pound, 8 pound) or as small medium large, or by combining a size with a manufacturer.


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## greatgems (Aug 24, 2011)

i do find iodine eats away at pm alloys anything really with pm in it turns it to a nice fine dust at the bottom of the solution only if bubbler is used really eats away at silver plating slower then the other pms so i can see it working quite well at these cats do you have one maybe try because if there is 30-50 dollars of pm on the which is possible iodine would be the only cost effective way to remove it. Plus its passive do you have any cats i can buy from you


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## kadriver (Jan 4, 2012)

I found some good info on recovering the PGMs from the metal foil type cats. The post has pictures:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=12481

There appears to be quite alot of washcoat from these metal foils.

kadriver


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## craigmotyka (Jan 26, 2012)

These converters are called foils and yes they are a pain and not worth much ... A good pricing if your buying is small not more 15 medium not more 40 and large on some high performance hondas porches and vw as high as 70 if you follow this price guide you will make out good these prices are based on 1600 pl 1400 rh and 700 pd


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