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

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Now maybe since there is a change of tune with leaching for pgms on this forum from cats you all will soon believe me and change over to the method i described. I talked with a guy this weekend also at the Central California Gold Show at our fairgrounds and he said yes this is a very effective way that I have told you guys, but he also said to start in small quantities at a time until I get the hang of it and then go bigger and bigger. Which makes sense. I can hardly wait til I start this process.

Rob

You dont count punches in a brawl, you just know who won because hes still standing.

by,
Rob Hancer
 
Haa. .I was wondering how long before you chimmed in, we had a few side bets going,,,,, hope there's no hard feelings....first one to a profitable check wins! Frog
 
Platdigger said:
Irons, Harold, let me ask you this......were you able to recover any rh from them back then?
Randy
Click to expand...
My experience was brief. A friend, also a refiner of sorts, brought me a small amount of beads that he had removed from the cat on his Buick. :? (He was of the opinion that he was better off without the cat.)

I roasted the beads, then dissolved what would dissolve in AR. I don't recall the results now, this having been many, many years ago. Late 70's, as I recall. At any rate, the only thing that sticks out in my mind is that the solution was not easy to filter, and there wasn't much metal present. I can't even recall if I found platinum and palladium, although I did extract values. It was painfully obvious to me that I would be wasting my time screwing with them, particularly at that time, when they weren't as readily available as they may be today.

Hoke suggested that Rh did not dissolve in AR, so if there was any present, I certainly didn't find it. My experience with traces of Rh agree----I've boiled it in AR for an extended period of time without dissolving any. If I was to venture a guess, I may have had ten grains, tops. It came from some silver jewelry, which was commonly plated back then, to prevent tarnish.

My mindset with cats was the same as refining electronic waste. There are far better sources of precious metals that will provide a larger return on your time-----and that's where I went. It isn't likely to work for everyone, if for no other reason, things are very different now than they were then. Small refiners were unknown, and benchmen had few options as to where they could send their wastes for either recovery, or to sell them. They took a beating when doing so----especially if their materials were "contaminated" with platinum. The mint would penalize the sender if any were contained in the shipment, so they not only didn't receive credit for the values, but received discounted pay because they were included. By sharp contrast, I was in the right place at the right time, and could serve the jewelry trade without penalty. Most benchmen create traces of platinum group metals in the course of doing business, and it became legal for the common citizen to refine gold without a federal license. In a sense, I drew a royal flush.

For once in my life, everything fell in place without effort. It isn't unusual for me to proclaim that the only thing anyone has ever given me in life is a bad time. Gold refining was clearly an exception.

Harold
 
I spoke with a guy at a cat processor, he told me they only work with heat to recover the PGMs , the power lines running into the place are HUGE. I think they just make dore bars from the cat materialand send it off for the refining.
Also I think it was on this forum a guy talked about a copper refinery the fed the ground cat material into the copper melt to claim the PGMs.
 
Seems like heavyshakes would want one of these or a little bigger? http://cgi.ebay.com/50kg-tilt-induction-heat-Smelter-metal-casting-furnace_W0QQitemZ200199613294QQihZ010QQcategoryZ633QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem looks like steve could make one of these?
 
Both very true I'm sure Scrapman. I read a while back that the Stillwater mine in Montana was gearing up to run cat material with their platinum ore from their mine. Makes sence to me. Mix a higher grade ore with what you already have. Must be what is and has been happenning in South Africa too.
Randy
 
Experimental

This furnace was initially designed and constructed as an experimental furnace for steel processing with a 200 lb. capacity.

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For dross processing, a carbon lining was added and pilot tests were conducted.

After these tests, the furnace was converted back to steel processing configuration and then shipped to a foundry for plasma processing tests.

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Experimental plasma furnace at university.


Schematic diagram showing cross-section of experimental furnace.


D.C. Plasma Arc.




http://www.nuprocorp.com/products/plasma/plasma.htm HMM 200 lb at a time, but for steel, wonder if it could be used for cats???????
 

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After researching for hundreds of hours (ok, it might only be 79 hours but it seems like hundreds lol ) by searching the internet I have found the following:

Rhodium is only in 3 way converters which were introduced in 1981. All converters from 1975 til 1981 contained only Platinum and Palladium.

Some other interesting PGM content I found in reading some US Government Mineral Reports is that the early Catalytic Converters (from 1975 to 1980's) contained a 2 to 1 Platinum to Palladium content ratio with an amazing swing of content from as little as .033 troy oz. of PGM's to an astronomical .33 troy oz. of PGM's !
I've also read that the loss of PGM's due to the life of the converter averages about 10% . This would make them worth approximately from $40.00 to $400.00 each at present prices. The technology to coat the PGM's in the early catalytic converters was crude and inefficient, allowing some to be loaded up with a large amount of PGM's.

Now turning towards the more recent converters. I found another article that stated Toyota uses 1.5 grams of Rhodium on the average converter and GM uses .5 gram on average.

Looking at dozens of pages of companies buying scrap catalytic converters, the highest price I found for an average GM (small) was $64.00. The Large GM was $100.00. Average price for a GM then is approximately $82.00. Now if the average GM has .5 gram of Rhodium and 1 gram of Platinum (the Palladium is negligible , we will just use that for cost of chemicals, resins, labware, transportation, materials etc. etc.) Taking into account once again the 10% loss , this translates into approximately $150.00 to $200.00 for the average GM at today's spot prices. With the lower end being if the Platinum content is lower than 1 gram. (However, don't forget Iron's comment that the prices can crash at any moment too)
You also won't recover 100% either...
Please understand this is all educated guessing from many different government reports and industrial articles too.

[/quote]
 
ah, now that would make the average price for a GM of approximately $110.00. that buyers are paying Mark. Still looks like a substantial profit depending on costs and time to process.

The induction furnace seems a possible way to go as this will take care of the carbon and gangue contamination. Lou mentioned using copper to gather the PGM's and I have read in many different places that copper is used to gather the PGM's too. The cheap cost of the electric to melt as well as speed looks like good cost feasability.

So you crush substrate, melt fast in induction furnace with copper, then perform the hydrometallurgical separation.

I have a question. You can inquart karat gold with silver and less nitric is needed to dissolve the silver than if you used copper. Can you use silver in the melt to gather the PGM's, to use less nitric too?

I realize the Palladium would dissolve too but then you would only have the Platinum and Rhodium to separate in one process and Silver and Palladium in another.

I swear I'm gonna use da atomic chart symbols one of these days lol
 
daveerf said:
ah, now that would make the average price for a GM of approximately $110.00. that buyers are paying Mark. Still looks like a substantial profit depending on costs and time to process.

The induction furnace seems a possible way to go as this will take care of the carbon and gangue contamination. Lou mentioned using copper to gather the PGM's and I have read in many different places that copper is used to gather the PGM's too. The cheap cost of the electric to melt as well as speed looks like good cost feasability.

So you crush substrate, melt fast in induction furnace with copper, then perform the hydrometallurgical separation.

I have a question. You can inquart karat gold with silver and less nitric is needed to dissolve the silver than if you used copper. Can you use silver in the melt to gather the PGM's, to use less nitric too?

I realize the Palladium would dissolve too but then you would only have the Platinum and Rhodium to separate in one process and Silver and Palladium in another.

I swear I'm gonna use da atomic chart symbols one of these days lol
Click to expand...

Some research done by assayers have found that Gold gave the best recovery of PGMs, followed by Silver. In the old days when the Spanish were plundering South America, Platinum was a big problem. It would make the Gold brittle and difficult to refine.
 
Interesting source Harold. I got my cats the same way. Before it became illegal, some performance minded car enthusiasts would empty their converter of beads or just put in a straight pipe. I knew a guy who was doing the conversions and he supplied me with a steady if not large quantity of beads to test. I was working at a university at the time, so I had access to equipment and reagents.
 
I'm slowly switching over to the dark side! The problem with leaching acids is the fact that the PGM's are diffused into the substrate all the way through, seems a common misconception is that they are plated on the surface, to get all the pgm's out require destroying the substrate with acids , but that creates a whole new set of problems. I understand Mike at Action Mining process and why he thinks its a better to do it the way he shows, hopefully the small timer can collect enough pgm's to pay for the converters, and like I mentioned before the pay day would be from the smelter. Now , recoverery of pgm's in high amounts through high pressure autoclave is possible but that is not for us small timers. Rob , how do you like the 200lb plasma arc furnace?
 
Lou said:
It's tried and true that lead works, same for copper. Both (more often copper) are used industrially. Thing is, I don't agree with Rob's saying it's cheaper to use the lead. They (the EPA, your municipality, hell even your neighbors if you're not zoned right) can nail your ass to the wall if you're using 2000*F and VOLATILE (meaning it's got a vapor pressure!!) lead to collect values. There are stringent guidelines for dealing with lead. You'll need to have a fume scrubber (many thousands of dollars), periodic inspections, etc. It gets worse if you employ other people!



As a general note of caution to you all considering iodine, make sure you CYA very well with a business license and proper documentation and can explain all of your glassware because it's now illegal to own elemental iodine in ANY quantity. New DEA regulations, which really are pretty stupid since anyone who really wanted iodine need only get potassium or sodium iodide, but thankfully 99% of those damned methcooks aren't smart enough (if they were, they wouldn't be ruining people's lives/hobbies/ causing extra bureaucratic red tape, etc. instead they'd have real jobs!)

Lou
Click to expand...

hey does anyone know what the EPA regulations would be for useing the furnace with copper, or silver instead of lead?
 
Rules, We dont need no stinkin rules down here..... just shut the gate and let out ole' blue, he will warn you if any of them folks come near,,, in texas "no tresspassing" with a locked gate is a legal way to shoot first and ask questions later, and all the epa,tecq, fire marshals etc know it,,,, very rarely will they go onto a property that is locked up, they have no rights......... and if they do they are tresspassing and anything they find will not hold up in court,,,,,,But the easier way would be to check with your local fire marshall, they will direct you to your local air quality controller, here its TECQ and they are easy to work with... EPa is federal and they just set the rules, your local boys enforce them and they can help.... Frog
 

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