***** The Platinumill Exposed and on Trial *****

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aflacglobal said:
The guy who is interviewing him is the same guy who invented the Que cat scanning device for magazines. He also bought and reworked the company that makes them dam triple edge wiper blades that you see on tv all the time. Jovan is his name. He has a bad rap with investors around Dallas and Houston. He tried to get me in on a deal to build him a processing facility in tx. He's got the money, but he took it from others in a fu**ed up way. They will be perfect cell mates. Hey, maybe i can get old Gold toutor in on this too. Three blind mice, see how they run .............

:p :p :p
Click to expand...

I have some cue cats. I was playing with the software the other day. Interesting device.

used to get them for free at Radio Shark.
 
Send him to the South pole,or some nasty place in Africa,,, Enough of that loser, If he did things right ( better build,specific instructions, quality parts, availability to anser questions) I'm sure he would still be making these, what a joke. He better not show up in my town, We boys down here dont take kindly to northerners who are trying to pull the wool. Texas is a big state, we have alot of dirt and shovels are cheap.... :D
 
I do not trust anything just because it is/was on the discovery channel. They are entertainment and do not research stuff like this from what I can see. Do not take me wrong they have an excellent channel and when I watch TV it is usually DC or the history channel. They had a show about a guy I think Paul Newman, that supposedly made electricy from nothing when he actually just showed amps, and everyone knows you need amps and voltage at true rms to even figure out the power.

Froggy, Love Dirty Jobs.

Jim
 
Froggy said:
He better not show up in my town, We boys down here dont take kindly to northerners who are trying to pull the wool. Texas is a big state, we have alot of dirt and shovels are cheap.... :D
Click to expand...


Note to self--don't piss Froggy off. :)

One thing 'bout Texas that I take offense to is their arcane and utterly stupid glassware laws. Look 'em up Frog or ask a lawyer and you'll be really sad to hear that you can't own so much as a beaker. Not to mention that if you were to disassemble a coffee maker for the hotplate and the pyrex carafe you'd be committing a misdemeanor.

I too like Dirty Jobs. Good show, makes me feel I've got it real good!


Back to the catalytic converter business: on this matter, I'm with Harold. I don't think making money out of cats is easy, if you plan on processing them for metals content and THEN selling the metals. It could no doubt be very profitable, but you have to weigh several factors, namely your efficiency, how much your spending per converter, and how much reagents (and their cost) you use in stripping them of values.
I don't think there's an easy to way to get the PGMs out of them. I've worked with platinum and palladium on many an occasion (and rhodium less often), and I'm not here to fool you--they can be tricky, and putting them into solution isn't quite that easy. I do agree that ion exchange resins could be employed to concentrate the values, but I think it would require some good research as to which resin is best.

If I were doing it in bulk (let's say 1000 converters every month) and out for profit, I'd buy some big Nalgene 66 gallon or whatever they are poly drums, some drum heaters, some sort of pulverizer (jaw crusher, gyrator crusher), build my own damn roasting oven with a stainless conveyor belt, and buy the acids in bulk at 60 cents a gallon or whatever it costs. After everything is roasted, I'd dissolve away the substrate leaving Pt and Rh (and some Pd), selectively precip. the Pd from the solution (goes for refining). Then I'd part the Pt from the Rh with aqua regia. Fuse the Rh, go through the hoopla to get it to a form good for hydrogen reduction. As for the Pt, precip. and burn to sponge, then redissolve to refine. A lot of work, and most of the reagents go to removing the substrate. Either that or I'd set up for and try to prove the gas phase extraction on a grand scale. That method is highly efficient on the small scale, but it's also involved. Benefit is that it removes the metal from the substrate, not the substrate from the metal. Still a lengthy aqueous chem work up ahead of you going by that route, but it's easier to get purer product. I'm willing to be that techemet goes through the first process. Oh, they're probably assaying with ICP analysis.

It makes sense that the more you do, the more you'll save on reagents and processing. I'm not here to dissuade anyone who's a hard enough worker to do them all by hand (Lord knows with rhodium at $8500 an ounce, I'm about ready to), but it is going to be hard work just as Harold said. You'll be busting your can for every dollar.


Lou
 
Lou,

Funny you mentioned the fiber drums and heaters, just last Friday I was googling the prices.

I've got another angle on your gas phase idea also. What do you think about setting up an induction rig to heat the metal in the honeycombs and pipe the chlorine thru the substrate? Maybe some sort of nonmetallic sealed piping system to get the Cl2 in while the honeycomb metal is hot and then send it on to the next station when it gets the now soluble chlorides extracted. You could do them in batches depending on the IH coil setup and your gas flow system.

One better may be an flat single ring IH that the honeycombs go by in a sealed environment containing the halogen. They get heated just by passing close by the IH coil and the gas combines with the PMs. It would require a lot of overhead to set up, but once you got the system in place and perfected you could process the cats very quickly. You would still have to work out the aqueous extraction routine also.

Steve
 
Steve, I am trying to follow your induction heating method. Induction works similar to microwave, exiting the molecules of a metal. The lower the frequency, the deaper the penetration. The higher the frequency the shallower, even to the point of a skin effect heating. The energy is induced. Do you think the little bit of dispersed metals on a honey comb substrate will heat up efficiently and or evenly?

Just trying to understand your thinking here.
Randy
 
plug the ends and run your gas through these? http://rubbermill.com/stoppers1.html you guys are so far over my head! Oh- the oxford guy that was doing the supercriticle thingy emailed me, said he has been blocked, i sent a email to NOXX but no reply?
 
Froggy said:
Steve, lou,harold, Irons HELP!, Anything solid on the rh recoveries with the action mining solution mix?
Click to expand...

I'm no help. None at all. I had a philosophy when I refined, and it was much like that of the early day miners. Go after that which comes easily, and leave the rest for others. That's why I didn't mess with electronic scrap or cats. I stuck to silver, gold, platinum and palladium, all metals you encounter regularly, and are easily processed. I have absolutely no knowledge where other precious metals are concerned.

I do have a keen interest in hearing how each and every person on this forum fares in their pursuit of cats. We need not all think alike---and it's good that we don't. Someone, somewhere, is going to solve this riddle-----I hope it's one of you guys.

Harold
 
I noticed on Action mining's cat processing video that the guy refers to
platinum, palladium, and ruthenium. No mention is made of rhodium.
Oh well... I have 10 lbs. of cls26p just sitting here waiting to be used.
I have been waiting for the Sys. III for over three weeks now.
According to Jessica, (the lady that answers the phone when you call) they haven't shipped it because they have been waiting on a part.
I'm starting to think they must have had to build a new factory first.
For now, I'll just sit here and pat my foot , and wait.
Patience is not my best virtue.
 
Heya Steve,

I found a chemistry forum with a chemist who claims to have tried the hot aqua regia method of PGM extraction from catalytic converters and also tried a gas phase extraction method. He stated he received a higher recovery rate of PGM's with the gas phase extraction.

His method of gas phase extraction involved using a stainless steel tube and taking pre-treated ( I assume he means roasted to remove the carbon and other gangue material) , crushed substrate and passing a hot halogen (CL2 ) at 400+C which collects the PGM's as volatile halide salts and are then passed through a cold finger at other end of apparatus, which deposit as a red brown crust.

For anyone wondering what a "cold finger" is, it's not the middle finger from a chemist that is having a bad day *grin*
 
Thanks for listening to my crying but I sent 66 $100 bills to him. The detective needs to know if there are any people that also bought one of these platinumills in order to go ahead with criminal charges there are looking for some body that is happy or not with it Thanks Bob
 
I've read some posts about some of you that are building furnaces.
Is anybody set up to do cat mat fire assays yet?
I've been waiting to hear from GSP?
 
since I heard about a chemical made by sybron chemical especially for pm I was wondering what you guys think about articles like this and maybe guys with a alot more knowledge than I can enlighten us all in how this may play out for many of us seeking a decent process for cats. By the way the chemical is called SR-3 resin, or maybe found under Sybron/Ionac SR-3 resin


http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6551378-description.html

AF
 
http://www.ion-exchange.com/service/pdf/Waste_Water.pdf interesting link, I will call afew places tommorow and dig more info out, Lou may know a little about this , he is a research chemist that works on waste feed, this stuff is safe to work with , thats fo' sure!!! her's another tid bit of information::::: The rich or pregnant water stream from the dewatering system is sent to an ion exchange system for separation of the precious or semi-precious constituents of the mixture of acidic FEW 41 and source material 27 . In ion exchange system 32 , selective resins may be used to separate the precious or semi-precious source constituents or products of the mixture, although activated carbon and other methods, including but not limited to precipitation, chemical reaction, purification, concentration, etc. can also be used. If resin separation is used, the pregnant water stream 43 is pumped through a column containing one or more selective resins. Depending on the nature of the pregnant solution and the species, which may be products or compounds of products, present in the solution, there may be numerous resin columns, each containing a different type of resin. For example, an SR3 resin could be used in a first column to retrieve gold from the pregnant water stream 43 and a second column containing DOWEX® M-4195 15 may be used to remove copper from the pregnant water stream 43 . If it was desired to clean the final liquid discharge of all ions in solution, an AMBERLITE® 400 column may be used as a final catchall. Moreover, certain metals, such as mercury, may be separated for recovery using either a resin column or activated carbon solution.

Once a selective resin is loaded with the desired species, it is necessary to unload the products from the resin by methods understood by a person having ordinary skill in the art such as fuming, washing, chemical recovery methods, etc. The product unloading may be done at another location by sending the loaded resin to a processing facility. For example, the valuables may be removed from the selective resin by fuming, which is generally only economical when the recovered species has a high value, such as gold. With other valuables such as base metals, the cost of fuming the selective resin may be too high with respect to the value contained therein to prove economical. If fuming is not used, then the species may be unloaded from the selective resin using an appropriate solution
 
We've discussed ion exchange resins for extractive metallurgy. There's a few to choose from and several proprietary, patented processes. Deciding which one is the most efficient (percentage of PGM's reclaimed), the easiest to use and most cost effective. I guess would require months and months of testing, a large amount of capital to perform all the tests , purchase the needed equipment and material etc.

Just a side note, if you are buying the Sybron system pictured on the first page and having it installed. I hope you have ten or twenty million dollars or maybe a hundred million and a cost overrun budget of another ten to fifty million. Keep looking at that picture and dreaming lol

GSP has the best idea so far and I agree with him that if you are concerned with making the best profit, simply crushing the substrate to a fine powder, mixing until homogonized and getting an independent lab assay that uses an ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) Mass Spectrometer of the homogonized powder, I think, is the best bet. I'm not sure about powder assays. If anyone knows if the homogonized powders can get a precise assay, let us know.

(Never and I repeat, NEVER send an unknown amount of precious metals to a refining company without an independent assay. Might as well ask them how far they can stick a laboratory glass stirring rod up your *edited in good taste* lol )
 
Oh , I agree with gsp's method you mentioned 100%. but to start out in this you cannot use his method unless you have a ton of cash. The science of the sybron system can be used. Just use sr-3 only, it would just leave a combination of metals that would still need to be refined, the million dollar system you mentioned seperates each metal into each group. The resin for the general pgm's is sr-3, no testing required. Now after you have your metal combo ,send it out for assay and then to a refiner. Of course this is just my opinion I have formed after reading for 16hrs straight. But usually any thing done on a large scale can be done on a smaller one, the science is the same.. Frog
 
Hiya Froggy, I think you misconstrued my post. I know for sure you can run a small scale operation by the ion exchange extraction or the gas phase extraction method. I just meant to say there are many resins and formulas to choose from and in effect, if you do try Sybron's method, then you are indeed doing testing. My main theme was to say "Read and research". Research and other's opinions can be very helpful. Please don't think I was trying to discourage you. In fact, it's the opposite, post as much as you can find on ion exchange and gas phase extractive methods.

I was also joking about the large set up and merely trying to elict a smile or laugh. :)

I am glad of one thing though, that you are looking at other processes besides just the system IV by action mining. Like you said, he's not a chemist, the DVD makes no mention of Rhodium and have you talked to anyone that successfully used the machine that is not affiliated with action mining?

Also, I have contacted many refiners years ago and most won't take sludges or liquids, if not all of them, as you have found out recently too.


Have you read in the news about many colleges are now offering free online courses? MIT offers several courses in Science. It's 100% free, you just don't get any college credit. I've been trying to find a course on Extractive Metallurgy but I've been busy lately and haven't tracked it down yet. Click the link below to find out more.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Chemistry/index.htm
 

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