Hello to all practical scientists and chemistry lovers I have a stock of PGM's that come to me frequently from electroplating companies, in the form of a noble bath under a brass alloy and pre-treatment of a copper bath. I have read many documents on the subject and spent days reading posts from my noble professional colleagues who are a true Harvard faculty, pearls. I came across this article that seemed relatively simple to execute when it comes to the infamous and beloved platinum metals, I would like to enrich the forum with it. It shouldn't be anything new for the noble professional practitioners who have been handling these metals for a long time. Reading, I thought about replacing the NaClO3 for Pd extraction with DMG in a chlorate medium since I don't have Pt in the solution, just Pd and Rh as targets and other contaminants.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jchem/2019/2318157/
The problem I see with the article you provided is that it is just another
SMALL scale research paper & the problem with that is that in these SMALL scale research projects where they are able to show good results does
NOT mean that they will work well when you go to scale up to actual LARGER production (for profit) processing
Quote from the paper; - For each experiment, solid powder and working leaching solution (solid/solution ratio is 1 : 20 w/v, respectively) were put in a 250 mL flask. - end of quote
You could not even get all of the crushed comb from even one comb in a 250 ml flask -
maybe a 1/4 of comb --- my point being - to scale up to "for profit" processing would require
VERY LARGE reaction vessels
And there is the
REALLY BIG problem with leaching CATs on a LARGE for profit scale
Quote from the paper; - The honeycomb unit
was crushed and then ground using a cutting mill (IKA MF10) until the powder size reached 0.3 mm. - end quote
Have you ever tried filter/washing the leach out of the
MUD created from leaching
crushed CAT combs ?
It is one thing to wash/filter the leach out a small amount of this MUD (like a 1/4 of a comb in a 250 ml flask) but I can assure you that on a larger scale - even beyond just a couple CAT combs (let alone on a for profit scale) it is next to impossible -
if not impossible to get all the leach washed/filtered out of this ceramic MUD
The more of this ceramic MUD you have the more impossible it is to get the leach washed/filtered out
On any larger scale (beyond more then a couple CAT combs) you will suffer losses just in the fact that it is near impossible -
if not impossible to get all the leach washed/filtered out of the ceramic MUD - the bigger you go the more loss you suffer to leach remaining tied up in the ceramic MUD
This paper is nothing more then someone working on a VERY SMALL scale to get the grade needed for their degree & I can assure you it will not scale up to an effective method for PGM recovery from CATs
Kurt
