# nickel in cats pgm powder



## arthur kierski (Apr 25, 2011)

I found a lot of nickel after cementing pgms from cats----is nickel present in all cats?it gave me trouble ,as it came down with the rh in the ar leach of the powders----the rh that stayed in the filter paper was mixed with ni and pd----
how should i act in future cementations?
thanks all for informations
Arthur


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## lazersteve (Apr 25, 2011)

Arthur,

Are you certain your iron that you use to precipitate the mixed PGMs is not the source of the nickel?

Dissolve a small sample of your iron in HCl and dip a swab in the resulting solution. Next add a few drops of ammonium hydroxide to the swab to bring the pH up past 7. Finally test the swab with DMG to see if you get a pink color indicating nickel.

Here's a shot of the pink color in a basic solution:







Steve


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## arthur kierski (Apr 26, 2011)

Steve i did the dmg test with the solution after the bisulfate fusion---
the acid rh sulfate solution formed yellow pdglyoxime---i filtrated the pd out and to the green solution i added nh4oh until ph 8---it gave the rose characteristic of nickel collor.
tomorow i will do the test that you mentioned to see if the nickel comes from the iron used to cement the pgms --if it gives the characteristic nickel collor,do i have to change the iron for zinc?
ps :the green solution(acid) did not gave rh collor(red) with sncl2. i had to boil the glyoxime out ,then ,the solution became reddish and the sncl2 test gave the rh characteristic collor.to the redish 
solution i added formic acid and precipitated black rh powder(2,2grams).
thanks Steve for all help given-----
ps2: when i cement rh from a rh sulfate solution and the rh sulfate solution have organic additives,not all the rh comes out- i have first to boil out the organics and then all the rh cements

Arthur


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## arthur kierski (Apr 26, 2011)

the nickel is found in the cats and not in the iron powder-i dissolved iron powder in hcl ,added to the solution nh4oh ,filtrated and added dmg to the filtrate and it gave nothing(no pink collor)
Arthur


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## lazersteve (Apr 26, 2011)

arthur kierski said:


> the nickel is found in the cats and not in the iron powder-i dissolved iron powder in hcl ,added to the solution nh4oh ,filtrated and added dmg to the filtrate and it gave nothing(no pink collor)
> Arthur


Then I would assume the honeycomb is being contaminated with nickel from the steel housing during normal use while it is on the vehicle.

Steve


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## skippy (Apr 26, 2011)

Steve, I believe cats made in or for other world markets can and do use nickel as a catalytic metal in catalytic converters.


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## bubba (Apr 27, 2011)

arthur kierski said:


> I found a lot of nickel after cementing pgms from cats----is nickel present in all cats?it gave me trouble ,as it came down with the rh in the ar leach of the powders----the rh that stayed in the filter paper was mixed with ni and pd----
> how should i act in future cementations?
> thanks all for informations
> Arthur




Have you tried ion exchange resins? We set them up in what is referred to as a train. They have affinity for specific metals, and repel the trash metals, at least that's the theory.


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## arthur kierski (Apr 27, 2011)

i did not tried yet,ion exchange resins---i will try if the nickel presence persists--------the nickel was found in a lot of mixed fiat cars this lot (20kilos) gave a good quantity of pt and rh----less pd then usual--i think that the pd might have been substituted by the nickel---
thanks
Arthur


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## skippy (Jun 24, 2011)

I've been processing a batch of 10 cats and I came out with a lot of nickel in my solution too Arthur.
They were 4-dot GMs, and contrary to what I said earlier, nickel is allowed in catalytic converters in North America, it's in europe that nickel is not permitted.


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## skippy (Jun 25, 2011)

I thought I'd add a question here that is relevant to the topic. What is the best pH to cement out nickel, and what is the best metal to use? I want to eliminate the nickel from my waste solution from leaching cats.


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