# First Batch - Denoxxing recovered PGM solution



## kadriver (Jan 4, 2012)

I have processed two batches, 700 grams each, of catalytic converter beads in two large pyrex coffee pots.

I used aqua regia, adding 400ml hydrochloric acid with 600ml water to each pot.

Then I added 100ml nitric acid (all at once) to each pot and cooked the beads on a low boil for about 3 hours. Stannous test were positive almost immediately.

There was some brown fumes at first, but they stopped. So I added another 250 ml water, 125ml hydrochloric acid and 25ml nitric to each pot. I let the pots cook for another 3 hours - for a total of 6 hours of boiling time.

A test with stannous was strong positive for PGMs in the resulting solutions.

I am in the process of filtering the solutions (one course filteration, followed by a fine filteration under vacuum).

Once filtered, I should be sitting good with clear solutions full of mixed PGMs from the AR digest.

At that point, I am unclear on what to do next.

I am thinking that the next logical step would be to evaporate the solution and denoxx excess nitric (of which there will be plenty) by adding HCl to the syrupy solutoin until all the brown fumes are gone.

This step would convert the platinum nitrate to chloride (driving off the nitrates).

Once denoxx is complete I would:

1) Rehydrate with water and precipitate the mixed PGMs with zinc powder, then redissolve in AR - sounds illogical.

or

2) Precipitate the Pt from the concentrated solution from the denoxx with a saturated solution of ammonium chloride.

This is my first time with PGMs - any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you - kadriver


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## lazersteve (Jan 4, 2012)

If you use the AR route to extract and your soluton volume is small enough with no nitrates simply precipitate the Pt using ammonium chloride. 

Steve


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## kadriver (Jan 6, 2012)

lazersteve said:


> If you use the AR route to extract and your soluton volume is small enough with no nitrates simply precipitate the Pt using ammonium chloride.
> 
> Steve



Steve:

Neither of these conditions exit with this batch. Solution volume is over 3 liters and I used 250ml nitric acid to extract, so there will be excess nitric acid in the solution.

I did manage to extract nearly all the PGMs from these beads - a test sample of some of the beads from the reaction was boiled in hot AR in a test tube, then diluted. It yielded no stannous chloride reaction.

There is probably only about 2 or 3 grams of PGMs in this solution (this is an estimate and could be wrong due to my lack of experience). I concluded this from the spot plate comparison tests I did using my standard platinum solution (2 grains fine platinum dissolved in 100ml solution).

By reading Hoke, I have found that the excess nitric acid will need to be removed before I can precipitate with ammonium chloride.

I found a reference in Hoke that says when dissolving platinum in aqua regia, remove the excess nitric in the usual manner:

"Heat almost to a syrup, and when a little water is added there will be an evolution of brown fumes. Add some hydrochloric acid also, and evaporate again, repeating as often as necessary" Hoke page 175, para 3.

Thank you - kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 7, 2012)

I currently have two batches from catalytic converters processing at the same time.

I have two ceramic cat inserts leaching in HCl/Cl.

I also used AR to extract the PGMS from 1400 grams of catalytic converter beads.

This thread is for the beads - but I have included the HCl/Cl leach test results in this post.

Row "A" of the spot plate is one drop each (left to right) of Pt standard test solution, HCl/Cl leach sample, and AR sample.

Row "B" is a drop of each, but with 5 drops of water added to dilute.

Row "C" is a drop from the cavity diluted with five drops of water, plus 3 more drops of water for an even greater dilution.

Standard test solution is one drop of solution of 128mg fine Pt dissolved in 100ml solution.

HCl/Cl leach liquid sample is one drop from about 4 liters of leaching solution with two cermic honeycombs that have been leaching for about 5 days.

AR sample is one drop from a concentration of liquid that has been evaporated down to about 1 liter (evaporated from about 3.5 liters).

kadrive


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## kadriver (Jan 7, 2012)

There is actually 2 liters of AR solution from the bead extraction - not one liter as stated above.

I have already evaporated the solution down to under 1 liter (from about 3.5 liters).

I added hydrochloric acid and water to drive off some of the nitrates.

During the first evaporation, when the volume got down below 1 liter, some sort of crystal/precipitate began to form, so I stopped the evaporation. Plus the solution got cloudy again.

After adding the HCl and water, the volume increased to what it is now, about 2 liters. I added more water to try and dissolve the crystal/precipitate, but some of it was insoluable

The insoluable material is yellow and looks like platinum chloride - but how could it be if I have not precipitated yet?

I filtered the thick liquid several more times until there was no material at all in the last filter paper (five times). The solution is cryatal clear again (see photo).

I am doing another slow evaporation (no boil, just gentle heat on low). I will add some more HCl to get rid of all the nitrates, then precipitate with concentrated solution of ammonium chloride.

This is my first try at recovering and refining platinum group metals - any input would be welcomed.

kadriver


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## lazersteve (Jan 7, 2012)

Looks good.

Steve


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## kadriver (Jan 7, 2012)

A picture of the insoluable material that formed in the solution as I was evaporating. This stuff would not redissolve and stayed in the botton of the container until I filtered it out.

It looks like platinum chloride - but I can't see how it could be.

I will try an experiment - heat in a dish to try to convert this into platinum sponge. If it works, then I'll dissolve a few grains of it and test with stannous.

This is all brand new to me.

kadriver


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## skippy (Jan 7, 2012)

I wonder if it might be cerium (iiI) oxide.


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## samuel-a (Jan 7, 2012)

It most certainly not look like any platinum chloride i have ever seen.

Though a speculation, i think skippy is right.


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## kadriver (Jan 7, 2012)

Can anyone recommend some tests that I can do to try and determine what it is?


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## lazersteve (Jan 7, 2012)

Heat a pea sized piece in a test tube with HCl and test the resulting liquid with stannous chloride.

Steve


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## kadriver (Jan 7, 2012)

I'll do it tomorrow and post a photo of the results - thanks


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## Oz (Jan 8, 2012)

samuel-a said:


> It most certainly not look like any platinum chloride I have ever seen.


Sam,
Below is a picture of reasonably clean platinum salts I precipitated from a chloride solution. It looks very similar in color to what kadriver showed, but that does not mean what he has is the same thing. The problem is that many have not seen a clean precipitation w/o contaminates of Ammonium hexachloroplatinate. Typically they see the color tend towards the orange or red due to palladium contamination of the salts especially with converter feed stock.


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## samuel-a (Jan 8, 2012)

Hi Oz

Just to clear any confusion, i was reffering to salts of Platinum and Chlorine only, as insinuated by kadrivers post.
Not the ammonium salts related to platinum chloride.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12351

here's a sample of hydrated form of Chloroplatinic acid:


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## Oz (Jan 8, 2012)

Sam,
You are correct if the crystals are platinum salts from the chloride formed just by evaporation. Nice pic by the way.


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## kadriver (Jan 8, 2012)

This is the solution that has been reduced down from two liters to less than one liter (approximately). I added some hydrochloric acid to the evaporated solution to drive off the excess nitric.


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## kadriver (Jan 8, 2012)

Lots of red fumes were evolved from the solution as I poured in the hydrochloric acid.

But it was dark and I could not see if the fumes were still coming off the evaporated solution so I let it cool, covered and set it inside for the rest of the night.

I am going to reheat and continue the evaporation tomorrow when it is light outside so I can see if the red fumes are still being given off.

I am new to evaporation, so my ability to recognize when all the nitric has been expelled is limited. 

On adding hydrochloric, if no more red fumes evolve from the solution, then I can conclude that all the excess nitric has been removed.

Then I will make a hot concentrated ammonium chloride solution and precipitate the platinum from the evaporated hot concentrated PMG solution.

If anyone can see an error with my plan, then please let me know.

thank you - kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 8, 2012)

By the way, I dissolved some of the yellow insoluable material from the filter in hydrochloric acid - it partially dissolved, and the stannous test was negative.


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## lazersteve (Jan 9, 2012)

You can allow the denoxxed solution and the saturated ammonium chloride solution to cool before mixing. 

There is no requirement of heating.

Steve


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## kadriver (Jan 13, 2012)

Hello: I got most of the nitric acid out through repeated evaporations and then added hydrochloric acid. The solution became very syrupy (and still is). 

I made a batch of ammonium chloride, about 6 or 8 grams dissolved in water with solid undissolved ammonium chloride in the bottom of the container.

I had to filter it because the ammonium chloride solution was cloudy. Hoke mentions this saying "cheap ammonium chloride will be cloudy and must be filtered first" - in the Getting Aquainted With Platinum chapter.

According to Hoke, I must have bought "cheap" ammonium chloride. Any suggestions concerning good ammonium chloride (that will not cloud up when being dissolved) would be very helpful to me.

I had both solutions hot (even though lazersteve said that is not necessary). As I added the ammonium chloride, all went well at first and I began to see orange powder forming.

Then it began to bubble vigously, and finally boiled over into my catch container.

I then picked the 3 liter container up, it slipped from my fingers and broke in the catch container.

All my solution (with plenty of orange powder in it) ended up in the corningware catch container with broken shards of glass.

I poured all the liquid off into a fresh container, and began to filter it.

This was a miserable failure of my first experiment to recover platinum.

I just covered everything up and set it all aside for a while and worked on some silver.

I am slowly getting the desire to work with the remnants of the platinum experiment. It's not a total loss, and I did learn much from the work I did.

I will be more careful with the next batch. I will go much smaller.

Pictures to follow.

Thanks - kadriver


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## samuel-a (Jan 14, 2012)

kadriver said:


> Any suggestions concerning good ammonium chloride (that will not cloud up when being dissolved) would be very helpful to me.



https://www.google.com/search?q=sal+ammoniac+brick&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t

Dissolve a brick in boiling water. Then evaporate to dryness to form powder.
This is pure NH4Cl.


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## Harold_V (Jan 14, 2012)

kadriver said:


> I had both solutions hot (even though lazersteve said that is not necessary). As I added the ammonium chloride, all went well at first and I began to see orange powder forming.
> 
> Then it began to bubble vigously, and finally boiled over into my catch container.
> 
> I then picked the 3 liter container up, it slipped from my fingers and broke in the catch container.


All that because you heated your solutions when it isn't necessary (and certainly not desirable)? 

What have you learned about heating?

Harold


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## kadriver (Jan 14, 2012)

Harold_V said:


> What have you learned about heating?



Don't do it next time - kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 14, 2012)

samuel-a said:


> Dissolve a brick in boiling water. Then evaporate to dryness to form powder.



Samuel: I'll order a brick of sal-amoniac and do as you say.

Thank you - kadriver


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## Harold_V (Jan 15, 2012)

kadriver said:


> Harold_V said:
> 
> 
> > What have you learned about heating?
> ...


Chuckle!
Figured you'd say that. 

The largest batch of platinum I ever precipitated consisted of several ounces, all in two liters of solution. It was done at room temperature, with an ammonium chloride solution that started out as hot water, and was very cold after dissolving the required amount of ammonium chloride. Precipitation was instantaneous, with no other reactions of any description, and, for the first and only time, virtually complete. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm a strong advocate of the use of heat when refining---but only when it's necessary. 

Harold


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## kadriver (Jan 15, 2012)

After the boil over, I kept adding small amounts of ammonium chloride to the solution that remained in the 3 liter beaker a little at a time until all the ammonium chloride solution was added to the platinum chloride solution.

Before I tried to remove the 3 liter beaker (and before it slipped out of my fingers) I was able to do a test on the liquid in the 3 liter beaker, and do a test on the liquid that had boiled over into the catch container.

I used a double tipped cotton swab. The boiled over liquid in the catch container tested positive with stannous chloride.

But the liquid in the 3 liter beaker produced a completely negative reaction with stannous chloride.

It appeared as though there was a complete precipitation in the 3 liter beaker after adding all the ammonium chloride. 

I learned much and will do better next time - no heat.

I did manage to get some orange powder in a filter paper, but not much.


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## bubba (Jan 19, 2012)

I just don't get it folks.............whats the point here?.........is it to make money from catalytic converters? or is it a reason to get away from the old lady. If making money from catalytic converters is your goal, plan on spending a MINIMUM of two years learning all the grades, models, classifications and values of the 3,000 + different units that have been produced or imported into this country over the last 35 years. AFTER you know what the heck you are even dealing with, then, if you must, see how cost effective it is (or is not) to try wet chemical recovery. Otherwise, i guess it is just as good a reason as any to get away from the old lady, lol.


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## niteliteone (Jan 19, 2012)

bubba said:


> I just don't get it folks.............whats the point here?.........(snip), lol.



Bubba
You sound like a one string banjo (plink, plink…) No disrespect intended.
Why can’t some of us have fun recovering PGM’s without constantly being told we are losing money if we don’t just send them to you. Since you have all those years of experience, share some of the knowledge with us. Not belittle us for trying to learn to do something you have already done.

I’ve got a customer that hands me 10 to 15 large GM converters monthly plus $50 for chemicals and all he expects in return is 85% of the platinum recovered. I get to keep any palladium and/or rhodium I am able to recover.

The customer owns a recycling business and buys the converters (only large GM) for at most $40 each but is tired of getting cheated out of his money selling to local (larger) buyers (that probably pay less than you do) and he does not want to mess with trying to find other buyers. His words not mine.

He prefers to get the platinum which he keeps for himself. I like the arrangement because the money covers my expenses plus I get to keep 15% of the platinum and all the palladium and any rhodium left over that I can recover.

Again no disrespect intended. Just don’t knock someone that is doing a good job of learning and teaching others.
Tom C.


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## Oz (Jan 19, 2012)

A couple of points you may be missing Bubba.

If someone wants some platinum group metals, it is cheaper to refine PGM scrap to get them than to pay over spot price for them. That is very different than your business model of needing a profit from converters. In this case it is “a penny saved is a penny earned”.

Most members here refine as a hobby. If you want to learn how to refine platinum group metals, converters are a readily available source of material at little to no cost. The knowledge gained by refining this type of scrap could easily translate into future profits to the typical gold only refiner. An inexpensive education.

Do I think wet chemistry is a cost effective way to refine catalytic converters for profit? No. However if someone had the funds for the equipment and was willing to study this forum in detail, what is needed to refine converters at a profit is here.

Lastly, if someone wishes to engage in the trade you do (buying and selling converters) they have the choice of determining the value of different units themselves, or trusting someone else’s numbers for a fee. I will stick with my own data.

Frankly I am still trying to figure out why you are here considering you have decided after much money spent that you could not refine your own converters at a profit. At the risk of stating the obvious, the people you sell your converters to, obviously profit.


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## bubba (Jan 20, 2012)

niteliteone said:


> bubba said:
> 
> 
> > I just don't get it folks.............whats the point here?.........(snip), lol.
> ...


 
Well Tom, thats why this is the greatest country on the face of the earth, we have the freedom to do as we please, and people should do just that.
What I have shared since I have been on here could save someone that doesn't know a T24 Toyota,from a GB8 richman toyota, from a narrow gap GM, from his ass from a hole in the ground, Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mistakes.You want to talk about teaching others?, I do this on a commercial scale, thousands of units a week. Who else on here does that? Nobody is telling you to listen to my banjo, I think that the people with common sense on this forum can appreciate the prospective from someone with actual industry experience. I never said you won't make money unless you send your material to me, I am saying you can't compete with a smelting operation. You get 15%?... 15% of what? I would love to just have your tailings that are left over, they must be loaded. But, you are right about one thing, I am sick of talking about this same point also. I am going to mosey over to the gold prospecting and mining section and hang out over there. andy. www.westerncatalyst.com


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## bubba (Jan 20, 2012)

Oz said:


> Frankly I am still trying to figure out why you are here considering you have decided after much money spent that you could not refine your own converters at a profit. At the risk of stating the obvious, the people you sell your converters to, obviously profit.


 

So that you can quit wondering why I am on here, I am looking to network. Thats how I have built this business, 15 years of networking. Also, I enjoy recreational prospecting, and I have a few gold claims.
I made a statement, and that was just to ask what was the goal of the folks trying their hand at this on here. Hobbies are great, I would rather fish, but thats just me. andy. www.westerncatalyst.com


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## nickvc (Jan 20, 2012)

Tom c well I must admit I'm more on Bubba,s side if you have big volumes but you have a sweet deal going there, well done. I'd take Bubba up on his offer for your treated cat substrate if you have decent volumes and see what you can get back as I'm sure some of the PGMs will still be in there and it could be a nice little bonus, buy more equipment,improve your refinery or buy more cats.
I also agree with Oz if you get the cats for free or cheap or just have small volumes why not refine them but keep the substrate and trade them with Bubba or someone else when you have decent volumes, if it's only a few hundred dollars it all helps.


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## kadriver (Jan 20, 2012)

Bubba:

Hello, I am brand new to platinum and catalytic converters. I bought about 10 or 12 of them to experiment with - plus several kilos of beads. I am facinated with the chemistry involved.

It would be nice to make a few dollars doing something that I enjoy doing. My goal is to eventually refine these and try and get some profit doing it.

Right now I am just learning. I gain a great deal by posting what I do on this forum and then receiveing others feedback. This is especially true with my failures and mistakes. It really helps me learn.

From reading your post, it looks as though you have become an expert in this area - this is cause for admiration from a new guy like me. Any input from you would be well received by me.

kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 20, 2012)

Bubba:

What do you know about metal substrate (metal foil) type catalytic converters?

Is the amount of PGMs usually greater or less than the ceramic honeycomb type?

I have two metal foils cats - any info you can share would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you - kadriver


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## bubba (Jan 20, 2012)

Well, I have been informed that I don't play well with others, by the powers that be on this forum. thats not my intent. If someone was to listen, they would get an education you can't get in any school. 
I attached some pictures. Tom, you could buy a vacation house with what you would have lost making converter soup out of the pile I am standing in front of. Thats one day, one load. I buy a few converters.
The other picture is one of our shears, we build them in house. It's the only way to go. 
kadriver, if you look at my other posts, I have addressed foil converters before. One point I would repeat about foils is, leach them and you are in for one sloppy mess. andy. www.westerncatalyst.com


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## Palladium (Jan 20, 2012)

I being one who likes to play devil's advocate can understand Bubba's reasoning behind his stance. I also see Tom's View. I figure both peoples knowledge in the field is just as important as the knowledge other members have in their given profession. I to have been known to poke holes in someone’s plan which can be a good thing for finding your weaknesses or vulnerabilities. It's really a pleasure to see how far you have come kadriver.


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## rusty (Jan 20, 2012)

bubba said:


> I have addressed foil converters before. One point I would repeat about foils is, leach them and you are in for one sloppy mess. andy.



I can not find any reference made from you regarding foil cats in any of your previous posts.

I recently leached a couple of foil cats in a very dilute sulfuric acid in freezing weather the wash coat released from the foil in a matter of hours, it had taken days before the actual foils had begun to deteriorate. 

There is plenty of wash coat attached to the foils, with out an assay we're in the dark how much precious metals have been loaded.

I read an article where General Motors had outsourced the manufacture of their cats, after GM had an assay done it was found they were being over charged for the precious metals.

GM set up an in house lab to get better control of the situation, which also led to GM putting just enough precious metals in their cats to have a working unit.

Foreign automobiles manufactures have purposely overloaded their catalytic converters to avoid costly recalls from emission failures.


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## bubba (Jan 20, 2012)

rusty said:


> bubba said:
> 
> 
> > I have addressed foil converters before. One point I would repeat about foils is, leach them and you are in for one sloppy mess. andy.
> ...



Well Rusty, I think I was back and forth with skippy on that, don't recall the thread we were on when the subject of foils came up. What you have is 316 stainless steel foil, dimpled, the dimples coated with streaks of washcoat, and then wrapped up into a biscuit. The greenies love them because they don't absorb condensation from a car sitting out overnight, and therefore light off instantly, providing a catalytic reaction sooner than a ceramic one that must first dry out, then get up to operating temp and therefore producing less pollution. 
The problem is with foils, very expensive to make. and as far as I know, 2009 was the last car model year that they were produced. 
You are right, without an assay you are in the dark. 
This is about the time in one of my posts when I say something that somebody on here does not like, not because it's not true, but because it does not fit into someones pie in the sky dream of how they think they can operate in this business.
If you want to be a mechanic, you have to know how to diagnose an engine, If you want to be a doctor, you have to learn how to diagnose a patient, and if you work in extractive metallurgy, you absolutely have to know how to assay. Otherwise, as you said Rusty, you are in the dark.


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## kadriver (Jan 20, 2012)

Wow - there must be several hundred thousand dollars worth of precious metals in that pile of cats.

I have only ten. I cut them all up tonight and got all the honeycombs leaching in HCl/Cl.

I have three seperate buckets with about five or six honey combs in each one.

I got a small pile of red powder from my failed 1400 grams of beads experiment. Tomorrow I will try to render the platinum sponge from that powder.

I am having a blast! We sold 57 troy ounces of fine gold ingots last year. And over 600 troy ounces of fine silver. 

But that is peanuts compared to the metal that must be in that pile of cats bubba posted.

Thanks! - kadriver


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## Platdigger (Jan 20, 2012)

So Bubba, just curious, why don't you have your own smelting operation by now? I mean, if you can afford to buy that many convertors every day, or every other day or so, what's a few million for a furnace?


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## nickvc (Jan 21, 2012)

I'm not Bubba but I will try to answer that question from his perspective.
The cost of all those convertors must be extremely high and to keep the customers happy I'm sure they want paying on delivery to the premises. They then have to be opened and the value bearing materials extracted crushed in volume and then assayed, it all takes time and all that time more convertors are arriving which need paying for.
If I had that volume of material I'm sure the big boys would be happy to give extremely good terms to keep their highly expensive furnaces working 24/7 and probably 365 days of the year and to fill the refinery with big volumes of mixed PGM bars for which they already have customers waiting for the refined metals.
The cost of a furnace plus all the environmental controls, new buildings, extra security and staff would be a huge investment probably into many millions of dollars plus the time to build and commission it all and still the convertors arrive all needing paying for.... 
Big refineries cost millions to build and even more to run it's a seriously cash hungry business it's no surprise that Metalor used to be part of a Swiss banking group
Does the extra maybe 1 or 2% payout make it all worthwhile?
Can I find a better out for the PGM bars produced?
Do I need to build a refinery to make more on the PGMs by selling to end users? 
Or do I do what I know and use my money to buy more convertors and sell on?


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## skippy (Jan 21, 2012)

99% of the people here don't try to process circuit boards by
roasting and fluxing the pulp and metal. They pick away at the boards, pins, fingers cpus and the adventurous are now roasting some cpus. Does it make sense over selling them whole to someone who can process tons at a time?
Do these hobby processes scale? I won't digress into that, but I know this board would be a lot less interesting if the topics were boiled down to only economically sensible undertakings. 

Bubba, sometimes your tone has been maybe a bit abrasive, and in some ways your message misses some of the do-it-yourself learning aspect of this forum, but I will
say that you give, as far as I can see, an accurate view of the economics and workings of the business. It's a good message for any pie eyed newcomers. That picture of a mountain of cats should give perspective
to the uninformed - the big dogs operate at serious scales that will not translate well to the home garage. I have no real problems with your posts, in fact I would say I've learned a thing or two from them, and people here are of course free to 
argue over given topics and as long as we don't make it personal, derisive, etc, then it's all good sport.

I'm curious if these plasma operators process other material besides ceramic catalyst with their furnaces, say maybe ores or concentrates, or if they are very specific with what they do. Just a random question that struck me.


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## bubba (Jan 22, 2012)

Platdigger said:


> So Bubba, just curious, why don't you have your own smelting operation by now? I mean, if you can afford to buy that many convertors every day, or every other day or so, what's a few million for a furnace?


 Real funny platdigger, you and I have talked before. and you know that I am in California. enough said.


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## kadriver (Jan 22, 2012)

This is the material I was able to recover from the AR treatment of the 1400 grams of catalytic beads (there is some still in solution according to SnCl test).

It is obviously contaminated - judging by the color.

Could I dissolve this in water, filter the resulting liquid, then precipitate with ammonium chloride?

I have no experience what ever to use to get this in shape to incinerate into sponge.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you - kadriver


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## samuel-a (Jan 22, 2012)

Kev

Is this powder precipitated upon addition of NH4Cl ?


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## kadriver (Jan 22, 2012)

Yes


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## kadriver (Jan 22, 2012)

It was the result of adding saturated ammonium chloride to a liter of cat beads treated in AR. The solution had been evaporated repeatedly to get rid of the nitric.

I had more than this, but the container slipped from my fingers and broke. It went everywhere (except on me thankfully).

This is all I could get from the batch of 1400 grams of cat beads. It landed in the catch container on top of the burner I was using. I recovered it from there.

kadriver


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## lazersteve (Jan 22, 2012)

Looks like it has Pd in it from the brick red color. Check out my post on Purifying Palladium Salts. Ammonium chloride will precipitate Pd when nitirc is present.

Steve


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## kadriver (Jan 23, 2012)

Thanks Steve - I check your posts.

kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 25, 2012)

This solution is from the failed experiment - AR extraction of catalytic converter beads.

It took 3 days to pull this solution through a vacuum filter. Some brick red powder remains in the filter.

I decided to precipitate the PGMs with zinc powder.

First I added some water as the solution was very viscous from repeated evaporations.

Then I added some hydrochloric acid and zinc powder.

The black powder came down very easily.


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## kadriver (Jan 25, 2012)

Tomorrow I plan to dissolve the brick red powder in plain tap water, add some hydrochloric acid and precipitate the PGMs.

Then I will add the resulting black powder to my jar of black powder from other extractions for further processing to seperate all the metals.

*Does anyone see a problem with dissolving the brick red powder in water and precipitating with zinc powder?*

The red powder I am refering to is pictured (on a filter paper) in this thread a few posts above.

kadriver


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## kadriver (Jan 25, 2012)

I dissolved the brick red powder in 500 ml of distilled water with a little heat - dissolved very quickly - there was a bunch of trash in the resulting solution.

Bits if glass (from the beaker breaking) insoluable black material - probably dirt.

Also some bits of paper.

I filtered the solution and it came out crystal clear and clean.

Then I added some hydrochloric acid (about 200 ml) and more water.

I crushed some zinc powder and added it to the dissolved red powder.

The black powder came down quickly and cleanly.

Once I get all the PGMs precipitated I will begin the process of seperating the metals.

Thanks for looking - comments and critique welcomed.

kadriver


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## kjavanb123 (Feb 23, 2012)

kad,

You are doing so great for the first timer. I have been through your path before, and with generious help from members such Steve, and Lou, you are bound to eventually get the metals.

I have spent almost 6 months of serious testing to get where you are now, and your result this quick is pretty impressive. Good job man.

On this note, I like to donate some money to the forum and Steve for all the assistance and hoped he had given me during my trial on pgm processing. I will after the payment for 1700 kg mixed converters from Canada arrives.

Also one more thing, I just remembered, after zinc precipitation you just add hcl to cover the mixed black powder put it on medium heat then add few drops of nitric this would produce a saturated PGM solution and usually u don't need to denoxx much. then you add nh4cl solution to drop the pt salt then pd and rh usually left as a grayish powder.

Best regards and good job
Kevin


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## wash (Aug 9, 2012)

bubba said:


> Well, I have been informed that I don't play well with others, by the powers that be on this forum. thats not my intent. If someone was to listen, they would get an education you can't get in any school.




Damn, thats one good looking guy, lol. you hear alot about cats on this forum, but you sure don't see piles of converters like that on here. I'm still available to play devils advocate, and show people who want to listen to someone who has done it, how money is made and lost in this business........hey, I thought I was banned?!


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