PeterM
Well-known member
Muddy, If using Sulfuric, could you share what did you precipitated with? Hydrazine perhaps?
***** The Platinumill Exposed and on Trial *****
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Martijn
Well-known member
Last post in this thread was in 2009.
Click on the profile and look at the 'Last seen' date before you ask a question.
I don't think he'll read your message.
PeterM
Well-known member
Do you think he's passed? Thanks so much.
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Hopefully not, but he has not been on the forum for the last 11 years.
PeterM
Well-known member
Yggdrasil, thanks for your help.
P
P
I just read through the entire discussion on this thread, and yet nobody talked about WHY the difficulty of refining cats. Why is it so much more difficult, then a ring? Why is it so much more difficult, than wires, or even sweeps from the floor?
I hypothesize the answer lies within rhe physical state of the material. That’s what’s different. In the processing of manufacturing the catalytic material, difference agents were used to prevent agglomeration of the particles prior to application. It’s not a stretch to suggest that those agents are still present at least in some quantity, and perhaps even come out during the leaching process, in the liquid, with the metals. Heck, there might even be a significant amount of metals, encased within stabilizing agents, meaning the wet chemistry method produces a suspension, rather than a solution, but since the particles are so small, the naked eye cannot detect it.
It’s well known that this material is present in finely dispersed, nanoparticles. If we approach this problem from the “why” perspective, that’s how the answers can be found.
I’ve read Hoke, and she doesn’t give information on how to refine the fine powders, in fact she suggests to send that to a refinery. So the answers to this problem must lie OUTSIDE of the methods of Hoke. I’d assume Hoke’s methods will work once a recovery of the metals and sufficient particle size increase has been established, but that’s just an assumption.
I hypothesize the answer lies within rhe physical state of the material. That’s what’s different. In the processing of manufacturing the catalytic material, difference agents were used to prevent agglomeration of the particles prior to application. It’s not a stretch to suggest that those agents are still present at least in some quantity, and perhaps even come out during the leaching process, in the liquid, with the metals. Heck, there might even be a significant amount of metals, encased within stabilizing agents, meaning the wet chemistry method produces a suspension, rather than a solution, but since the particles are so small, the naked eye cannot detect it.
It’s well known that this material is present in finely dispersed, nanoparticles. If we approach this problem from the “why” perspective, that’s how the answers can be found.
I’ve read Hoke, and she doesn’t give information on how to refine the fine powders, in fact she suggests to send that to a refinery. So the answers to this problem must lie OUTSIDE of the methods of Hoke. I’d assume Hoke’s methods will work once a recovery of the metals and sufficient particle size increase has been established, but that’s just an assumption.
Cats was not invented in her days.
The problem is much what you said.
The PGMs are deposited on a wash coat that lines the inside of the Cat.
It is a ceramic substrate with immense surface area and parts of it us so small and deep the the acids can't reach it.
It might be done with high heat and pressure, but then we are talking about expensive gear.
Smelting is preferred for this, since it is faster and more complete, and do not produce the aggressive, toxic waste that acids do.
I’ve read multiple studies that successfully removed the values from the substrate, in as little as 3 minutes with a microwave, to 2 1/2 hours with standard leaching of HCl/H2O2. That’s tried and true, and analysis of the substrate indicates almost 97-99% removal in many of these experiments.
The problem I encounter, is how to cause the particles to agglomerate within solution. There’s thousands of studies on how to produce nanoparticles in solution, but very very few on how to induce agglomeration.
There has GOT to be a way to do this on the small scale, then scale up. Or even, scale out (100 machines processing 1 converter at a time).
If you dissolve it no longer are in particle form, then it is in a salt as Ions and it only needs to be cemented or precipitated.
Most of the studies one find is academical "papers" for publishing and has little value to any kind of real world applications.
They simply are not scalable as they leach a few ml at the time.
In the South African PGM production they use HCl - Cl in high pressure high heat reactors for the final leaching of the ore concentrate.
For anything else than a industrial scale this is not feasible.
Edit spelling error
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I don’t think the “leaching” processes proposed are dissolving all the values. Rather, the values are being freed from the matrix, and entering the liquid as a suspension, still in metallic form, not as soluble ions. Some values dissolve yes, that’s why stannous tests are conclusive…but I would estimate that a large portion of the values are left as metallic solids, invisible to the naked eye, encased in stabilizing agents, rendering them non-reactive to the actions of acids. Ironically, the particle size of what’s used in cats is smaller than wavelengths of visible light, so…
You can’t see it on a microscope, and you can’t see it with your eyes. But it’s there, I know it
And I’m going to try to figure it out. If I have to become a nano-scientist to figure it out, I will. There must be a simpler solution to the problem, there always is. And the best part? It’s not all about the money. It’s about winning.
I’m thinking about an evaporation process that allows for condensation, kind of like how rain clouds cause precipitation. Instead of precipitating solids from a liquid…precipitating liquids from a gas.
Yes, but wait.
Now we get into the censored sciences. It’s feasible on the small scale, but since this science enters the realms of how to contain high pressures safely, the available material on the Internet dwindles, because then you’d have a bunch of anarchists causing problems.
There’s a way to do this on the small scale. There must be, because they did NOT just make a giant machine and begin processing ore…
They first proved it could be done in the lab.
For ease I will comment in bold inside the quote!I don’t think the “leaching” processes proposed are dissolving all the values. Rather, the values are being freed from the matrix, and entering the liquid as a suspension, still in metallic form, not as soluble ions. Some values dissolve yes, that’s why stannous tests are conclusive…but I would estimate that a large portion of the values are left as metallic solids, invisible to the naked eye, encased in stabilizing agents, rendering them non-reactive to the actions of acids. Ironically, the particle size of what’s used in cats is smaller than wavelengths of visible light, so…
This is plain wrong, the smaller the particles the easier it is dissolved, some of the Pd particles inside Cats are dissolved by HCl alone,
even if Pd is not soluble in HCl.
And if they were encased they would not function as catalysts and they would not be released since the ceramic matrix is nonreactive to acids.
You can’t see it on a microscope, and you can’t see it with your eyes. But it’s there, I know it
If it can't be found in tests it is not there!
And I’m going to try to figure it out. If I have to become a nano-scientist to figure it out, I will. There must be a simpler solution to the problem, there always is. And the best part? It’s not all about the money. It’s about winning.
I’m thinking about an evaporation process that allows for condensation, kind of like how rain clouds cause precipitation. Instead of precipitating solids from a liquid…precipitating liquids from a gas.
The temperatures needed to evaporate PGMs or ceramics is beyond any sensible method even in industrial settings, at least for the time being.
Yes, but wait.
Now we get into the censored sciences. It’s feasible on the small scale, but since this science enters the realms of how to contain high pressures safely, the available material on the Internet dwindles, because then you’d have a bunch of anarchists causing problems.
This is plain stupid conspiracy thinking, nothing is censored in science as such,
there are proprietary company owned processes that are not in the open, but they have been run trough labs or developed in house.
Microwave digestion and similar are used regularly in analytic settings but that do not mean it is feasible in any production setting.
In analysis cost do not matter, since it is the content knowledge that has value not the material.
So spending 100 dollars for 2 dollars of material do not matter since it will streamline how you process your material later.
There’s a way to do this on the small scale. There must be, because they did NOT just make a giant machine and begin processing ore…
They first proved it could be done in the lab.
That is a different kind of thing, that is called production testing and at that stage cost is a factor,
and the reason many of the promising papers do not leave the lab.
1. Encased particles break away from the matrix by dissolution of particles that used to adhere. Pd is known to form chains at the nanoscale, thus if the distal chains are encased in alumina, and proximal particles are not, and they dissolve, then you will be left with free-floating, alumina-encased nanoparticles that have broken free from the matrix, yet are still encased in alumina.
2. They wouldn’t be found in a stannous test, because a stannous test relies upon the metal being in a complex of chlorides, and tin displacing that chloride, producing a color change (right?) so a stannous test of metal in suspension, won’t yield a positive result, unless that metal is lower on the reactivity series, AND in chloride form.
3. The temperature required to evaporate a nanoparticle is correlated with particle size. For instance, gold nanoparticles at 2nm melt at 200 Celsius. My point is, I need to get the particles into a uniform size, dissolved in chloride complexes, before applying the methods on this forum
I’ve studied for a long time. This isn’t off the cuff.
2. They wouldn’t be found in a stannous test, because a stannous test relies upon the metal being in a complex of chlorides, and tin displacing that chloride, producing a color change (right?) so a stannous test of metal in suspension, won’t yield a positive result, unless that metal is lower on the reactivity series, AND in chloride form.
3. The temperature required to evaporate a nanoparticle is correlated with particle size. For instance, gold nanoparticles at 2nm melt at 200 Celsius. My point is, I need to get the particles into a uniform size, dissolved in chloride complexes, before applying the methods on this forum
I’ve studied for a long time. This isn’t off the cuff.
1. The metal will dissolve long before any of the alumina or other ceramics, actually it will dissolve first,
so there may be ceramic particles floating around, and they do not test anyway.
2. Stannous work well in any acidic milieu, unless it has Silver in it.
3. The net gave this result:
However the boiling point is the same as regular Gold, but now we are talking about PGMs which are way higher than this.
We are talking about the range 2000-2500C which is in the range of specialized Plasma or EBM systems.
So for big scale, Smelting is the solution.
It can be done hydrometallurgically but not at a economical sound way.
Read Kurtaks post on this, he ran an operation like this some time ago and dropped it.
Kurtaks doesn’t even mention the manipulation of valence states of compounds by the wavelengths of light that his solutions were exposed to. That in itself shows that his methods can be drastically improved upon.
There’s a reason that cisplatin and sulfasalazine have to be stored in the dark, in dark containers. That’s also part of why chemo is so effing expensive.
Here’s an A.I. clip…
“For platinum chloride (PtCl₄), the effect of different wavelengths of light can also lead to different chemical reactions due to the varying energy levels.
**Example:**
- **Blue Light:** The higher energy of blue light can provide enough energy to break the Pt-Cl bonds in platinum chloride, leading to the formation of platinum metal and chlorine gas. This process is known as photoreduction.
\[
PtCl_4 \xrightarrow{\text{blue light}} Pt + 2Cl_2
\]
- **Orange Light:** Orange light has lower energy compared to blue light and might not be sufficient to break the Pt-Cl bonds directly. However, it can still induce other types of reactions, such as photoactivation, where the platinum chloride absorbs the light and enters an excited state, potentially leading to different intermediate compounds or facilitating reactions with other substances present.
In summary, blue light can directly break the bonds in platinum chloride due to its higher energy, while orange light may cause different effects due to its lower energy, potentially leading to different reaction pathways or intermediates”
Thank you for the references. And the critiques! I don’t appreciate the “it can’t be done banter”, but I do appreciate the observations.
Deep Eutectic Solvents are the industry standards at this point for refining the PGMs…so I’ll probably have to develop an ionic compound that will suffice for the job. Ironically, there’s supposed to be millions of them that are yet to be discovered. I may take me another decade or so.
But it can be done, that I’m certain of.
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Agglomeration
Member
Good way to end up dead, messing around with PGMs. They are dangerous.
Did you actually read his thread?
He did many trials and even in pressurized vessels, so I can't see how they were subjected to light.
Anyway all hydro-metallurgial processes we do are subjected to light since we see pretty bad in the dark.
Dissolving Pt Pd Rh and what not.
Dissolving and separating Pt Pd is always/most of the time manipulated to lift all the salts to its highest valence by either Sodium Chlorate or bubbling Chlorine gas through it.
Golddigger76
Well-known member
There's plenty of us who have countless hours trying to come up with a way to refine catalyst effectively and efficiently with acids and most of us would share with the forum if we have had a breakthrough discovery of a method that anyone with refining experience could easily do.
I'm sure there's a simple and fast way to selectively separate and precipitate platinum group metals and if you figure out a method to do that please let us know.
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Just wondering out loud, if the cats could be leach- etched, prior to acid dissolution of the metals. This could possibly expose more of the nano particles imbedded in the Alumina, without having to completely dissolve all the Alumina.
What kind of substance are you thinking of?
HF would probably work, but I’m looking for non-kill-you-instantly methods
