Platinum > palladium > rhodium

[Wonka]

Hello,

I have researched like crazy all over the place and from what I’ve learned.

Drop gold with SMB
Drop platinum with ammonium chloride
Drop palladium with chlorine gas
Drop rhodium with zinc then dissolve zinc in HCL.

Is this process correct?

Edited for spelling.

 

[Wonka]

Also, I side note. Do I really need to completely dry the salts before I break them down?

 

[4metals]

To make this thread potentially useful in the future, please say what you started with to generate this solution, and the approximate concentrations of each metal in solution that you wish to recover.

 

[Wonka]

Aqua regia.

 

[4metals]

What scrap did you start with. Was it a bar that you have an analytical result for or was it a pile of e-scrap. Details matter if you are looking for better answers.

 

[Wonka]

I’m really just looking for a confirmation. Yes/no type of thing. I’ve already started the process. I’m about to move to palladium.

 

[4metals]

Well it may make a difference because if it is a lot of Palladium chlorine gas or sodium chlorate will work. But if it is a few grams I’d choose Dimethylglyoxime.

 

[Wonka]

Well I used 5 LBs of ammunition chloride to drop all the platinum.

 

[Shark]

ammunition chloride

Sorry, just found that hilarious.

 

[Wonka]

Sorry, just found that hilarious.

Lol iPhone autocorrect is just plan junk.

 

[Shark]

Lol iPhone autocorrect is just plan junk.

I agree 100%. Mine is so bad it corrects the words I spell correctly about 25% of the time.

 

[4metals]

I have researched like crazy all over the place and from what I’ve learned.

You spent a lot of time searching and still were unsure. So you started this thread where, if you had given details and specifics as to what you were doing and what you started with, we would now be looking at an organized description to define a process. But what you contributed to this thread is useless to anyone wanting to learn from it. You didn't even give enough information to help yourself.

One of the goals of the moderators here is to help threads to be informative. That is a 2 way street, without input from your end all you will get is guesses. And that helps no-one.

 

[Golddigger76]

4metals is spot on !!!
It has been a frustrating trend seeing these post with a very non detailed question.

It's perfectly fine to not know everything about refining but this forum is here to not just ask a question for a quick answer, it was originally intended to help educate each other on the technical problems we need help with.
I believe that if you want to gain more knowledge by asking a question then give detailed information about what you are doing, what you have done to get to the current place that you need advice about.
Sure it's a pain to spend time typing out a few paragraphs to let all of us know the information it takes on your behalf but please do !!!

In this section of the forum there's a huge need for learning opportunities for those who would like to know more about how to deal with these metals safety and successfully.

The few minutes of typing will benefit hundreds of people who are using the search engine on this forum plus it's going to help get you a proper answer.

 

[kurtak]

Hello,

I have researched like crazy all over the place and from what I’ve learned.

Drop gold with SMB
Drop platinum with ammonium chloride
Drop palladium with chlorine gas
Drop rhodium with zinc then dissolve zinc in HCL.

Is this process correct?

Edited for spelling.

Being as how you don't want to answer any of the questions being asked of you - the simple answer to your simple question (bold print in above quote) is --- yes

Kurt

 

[4metals]

the simple answer to your simple question (bold print in above quote) is --- yes

Or better yes……………sometimes! (It depends!)

 

[orvi]

Hello,

I have researched like crazy all over the place and from what I’ve learned.

Drop gold with SMB
Drop platinum with ammonium chloride
Drop palladium with chlorine gas
Drop rhodium with zinc then dissolve zinc in HCL.

Is this process correct?

Edited for spelling.

Generally speaking, it can work. Practically speaking, it may not.

Depending on the composition of the feed, acidity, base metals in the juice, other elements in... What is the concentration of respective PGMs etc.

PGM chemistry is complicated, and this is the most simplified sequence of how to roughly separate these metals. You will never obtain pure PGM salts/PGMs by one step simple precipitation. You would need to re-refine them once again. Also, if your solutions wouldn´t be concentrated enough, precipitations will be inherently inefficient (like NH4Cl Pt drop, or Cl2 gassing the Pd for example). More "complete" precipitation is, more drag of other PGMs occurs.

This would make many mixed fractions which are contamined with other PGMs, and whole reclamation of values would be much more tricky in the end.

This is why this pathway is not generally used anymore by large scale refineries (maybe russians are still using it, as it is the cheapest process and neglection of worker safety is ongoing issue there) - it is inefficient and tedious, lots of manipulations with hazardous and toxic substances, dusting, liquid waste that need to be stripped from values and then these need to be re-refined etc...

Trust me, I tried very hard to make it simpler and more efficient. Some improvements can be made. But overall, if one factor in the cost of your work and time spent, cleaning, reclamation and re-refining, you will came out the same, if you directly sold the alloy to the bigger buyer. Premiums on high purity PGMs can make additional buck, however, if you look to the whole picture and overall process, you would struggle a lot for minimal if any profit.

 

[Wonka]

Ya know I’ve been thinking about this for weeks and o don’t like the idea of using chlorine gas. I was thinking so step 1-2. Then drop the palladium and rhodium with zinc. Melt all of it. Roll it out. Then do a HCL bath to remove then zinc. Then a nitric bath to remove the palladium and I would end of with a near 999 rhodium. Then just dilute and drop the palladium with smb. I haven’t looked up if this would work for the palladium. But it makes sense that it would.

 

[Wonka]

Generally speaking, it can work. Practically speaking, it may not.

Depending on the composition of the feed, acidity, base metals in the juice, other elements in... What is the concentration of respective PGMs etc.

PGM chemistry is complicated, and this is the most simplified sequence of how to roughly separate these metals. You will never obtain pure PGM salts/PGMs by one step simple precipitation. You would need to re-refine them once again. Also, if your solutions wouldn´t be concentrated enough, precipitations will be inherently inefficient (like NH4Cl Pt drop, or Cl2 gassing the Pd for example). More "complete" precipitation is, more drag of other PGMs occurs.

This would make many mixed fractions which are contamined with other PGMs, and whole reclamation of values would be much more tricky in the end.

This is why this pathway is not generally used anymore by large scale refineries (maybe russians are still using it, as it is the cheapest process and neglection of worker safety is ongoing issue there) - it is inefficient and tedious, lots of manipulations with hazardous and toxic substances, dusting, liquid waste that need to be stripped from values and then these need to be re-refined etc...

Trust me, I tried very hard to make it simpler and more efficient. Some improvements can be made. But overall, if one factor in the cost of your work and time spent, cleaning, reclamation and re-refining, you will came out the same, if you directly sold the alloy to the bigger buyer. Premiums on high purity PGMs can make additional buck, however, if you look to the whole picture and overall process, you would struggle a lot for minimal if any profit.

What pathway is used? This seems the simplest way to do it. Besides the chlorine gas part. Taking the palladium contamination out wouldn’t be hard. The rhodium would but it’s not suppose to drop out with the other processes.

 

[Wonka]

Generally speaking, it can work. Practically speaking, it may not.

Depending on the composition of the feed, acidity, base metals in the juice, other elements in... What is the concentration of respective PGMs etc.

PGM chemistry is complicated, and this is the most simplified sequence of how to roughly separate these metals. You will never obtain pure PGM salts/PGMs by one step simple precipitation. You would need to re-refine them once again. Also, if your solutions wouldn´t be concentrated enough, precipitations will be inherently inefficient (like NH4Cl Pt drop, or Cl2 gassing the Pd for example). More "complete" precipitation is, more drag of other PGMs occurs.

This would make many mixed fractions which are contamined with other PGMs, and whole reclamation of values would be much more tricky in the end.

This is why this pathway is not generally used anymore by large scale refineries (maybe russians are still using it, as it is the cheapest process and neglection of worker safety is ongoing issue there) - it is inefficient and tedious, lots of manipulations with hazardous and toxic substances, dusting, liquid waste that need to be stripped from values and then these need to be re-refined etc...

Trust me, I tried very hard to make it simpler and more efficient. Some improvements can be made. But overall, if one factor in the cost of your work and time spent, cleaning, reclamation and re-refining, you will came out the same, if you directly sold the alloy to the bigger buyer. Premiums on high purity PGMs can make additional buck, however, if you look to the whole picture and overall process, you would struggle a lot for minimal if any profit.

Well you were right. The way all the articles I read explained it. The PGMs would drop separately but I just went to melt what I thought would be platinum and it was not. Haha. Looks to be black rhodium.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Well you were right. The way all the articles I read explained it. The PGMs would drop separately but I just went to melt what I thought would be platinum and it was not. Haha. Looks to be black rhodium.

The separation of PGMs are tricky at best. And it is almost never a clean separation.
For example:
Palladium dissolves in Nitric, Platinum do not.
But when alloyed the Palladium will drag the Platinum with it into solution.