# Pt Paste?



## dmarth10 (Nov 2, 2008)

I believe I recovered some Pt from a catalytic converter. It looked like a love of little orange salts at the bottom of my bowl. Then I filtered it off. Then stuck the Pt on the filter into a ziplock bag. 2 weeks later, I opened it to look and its like a paste. Is that normal or isn't it Pt. I precipitated it with ammonium chloride.


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## lazersteve (Nov 2, 2008)

It's not abnormal for Platinum salts to form a paste. escpecially if stored with a slight amount of moisture. I use alumina dishes with lids, fused quartz, and pyrex dishes to stored my PGM salts. I don't really recommend plastic as the powder tend to cling to it, and the baggie is hard to completely rinse out.

With a dish you can easily rinse any residual powder clinging to it into your stock pot.

You can confirm you have Pt with a stannous test on a crumb of the powder that is wet with a drop of water. A deep orange color indicates platinum. If it changes to blue-green after a few seconds it's Pd not Pt.

Steve


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