If you are not sure, ask a refiner

I fairly recently was contacted by someone who has several tons of a material that originated from industrial catalytic converters.

Unfortunately, he has already broken down and incinerated the material. Now he is stuck with tons of material that no refiner will touch. I ran a 1lb sample and discovered there were other minerals involved in the material that encapsulated much of the precious metals in solution which made it very difficult and expensive to extract. Nearly impossible unless you have the right equipment and are willing to spend the money, time, effort and energy for only a small return.

Just a friendly bit of advance from a refiner to a scrapper. If you are not sure how to process certain types of scrap, ask a refiner before you devalue your scrap by scrapping it into a form that makes it cost prohibitive for a refiner to process.

Scott

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

I fairly recently was contacted by someone who has several tons of a material that originated from industrial catalytic converters.

Unfortunately, he has already broken down and incinerated the material. Now he is stuck with tons of material that no refiner will touch. I ran a 1lb sample and discovered there were other minerals involved in the material that encapsulated much of the precious metals in solution which made it very difficult and expensive to extract. Nearly impossible unless you have the right equipment and are willing to spend the money, time, effort and energy for only a small return.

Just a friendly bit of advance from a refiner to a scrapper. If you are not sure how to process certain types of scrap, ask a refiner before you devalue your scrap by scrapping it into a form that makes it cost prohibitive for a refiner to process.

Scott

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Which method did you use to process that 1 pound sample.

If your contact has several tons of catalytic converter material he has no problem other than failing to research where to send his material. If he is Canadian he will need to apply for a GST or HST number before PMR will accept his material.

PMR will not accept anything less than 2,000 lbs, PMR Refiner - Catalytic Converter Recycling

You can also give Doug Meis a call 1 800 679 in Kentucky, he ships his material to Stillwater Refinery who require minimum 20,000 lb load

The problem with the material is that their are minerals that encapsulate the PGM metals, and make it exceedingly difficult to recover. It has to be smelted correctly to draw off the minerals that are causing the issue, and then the smelted metal has to be separated, parted, refined, etc. The material is catalytic, but not automobile catalytic material, it is industrial and composed a little differently than auto catalytic converters are. People usually don't realize that catalytic technology is used in industry, and has been even before it's use in autos.

Scott

What are the other metals that are encapsulating the PM's?

Minerals, or metals in mineral form. I cannot remember off the top of my head what it was that was encapsulating the PGMs, but I will find out, and post when I do.

Scott

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Originally Posted by BarrenRealms007

What are the other metals that are encapsulating the PM's?

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Barren, I would think that the precious metals would have to be exposed in order to work as a catalyst, if the precious metals are encapsulated the catalyst has been poisoned such as what happens when a farmer burns marked fuel in his vehicles.

As we all know in order for a catalyst to work the precious metals must make contact with what ever is passing through in order to make the changes. Does not sound like a serious problem to me.

I still would like to hear what process was used to attempt recovery of the precious metals. We have the makings of a conversation I would enjoy getting into.

Maybe he has a zeolite catalyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite

Petrochemical industry
Synthetic zeolites are widely used as catalysts in the petrochemical industry, for instance in fluid catalytic cracking and hydrocracking. Zeolites confine molecules in small spaces, which causes changes in their structure and reactivity. The hydrogen form of zeolites (prepared by ion-exchange) are powerful solid-state acids, and can facilitate a host of acid-catalyzed reactions, such as isomerisation, alkylation, and cracking. The specific activation modality of most zeolitic catalysts used in petrochemical applications involves quantum-chemical Lewis acid site reactions.^{[citation needed]}
Catalytic cracking uses reactor and a regenerator. Feed is injected onto hot, fluidized catalyst where large gasoil molecules are broken into smaller gasoline molecules and olefins. The vapor-phase products are separated from the catalyst and distilled into various products. The catalyst is circulated to a regenerator where air is used to burn coke off the surface of the catalyst that was formed as a byproduct in the cracking process. The hot regenerated catalyst is then circulated back to the reactor to complete its cycle.


Or a Silver Catalyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver

Silver's catalytic properties make it ideal for use as a catalyst in oxidation reactions, for example, the production of formaldehyde from methanol and air by means of silver screens or crystallites containing a minimum 99.95 weight-percent silver. Silver (upon some suitable support) is probably the only catalyst available today to convert ethylene to ethylene oxide (later hydrolyzed to ethylene glycol, used for making polyesters)— an important industrial reaction. It is also used in the Oddy test to detect reduced sulfur compounds and carbonyl sulfides.

Because silver readily absorbs free neutrons, it is commonly used to make control rods to regulate the fission chain reaction in pressurized water nuclear reactors, generally in the form of an alloy containing 80% silver, 15% indium, and 5% cadmium.

Hey Scott not sure if your interested but i have 600 pounds crushed ceramic honeycomb. 80 pounds of intact ceramic honeycomb bricks. 100 pounds of foil out of foil converters. And about 30 whole converters i havnt extracted the material out of yet. All of it automotive catalysts. Im looking for a buyer/refiner that will pay a fair price for the material. A nice little stockpile ive been saving up as PGM prices continue to rise.


I have taken part in many catalyst changeouts at coal power plants. Ive seen more tones of this material than most people in the catalytic industry have ever seen. Our catalyst baskets weigh about 1 ton each and there is as many as 300 depending on the size of the unit.

Did he have an assay done on the material before he started this?

If so I'd be interested in knowing what it showed was in the mix. If he had this done what was supposed to be recovered in PM's?

Do you mind if I ask how much material you had to work with and what you were able to recover from the material and alos what process you used?

What was his procedure for incineration of this material?

That is correct Gustavas that the catalyst needs to come in contact for the reaction to occour. The other info you found was interesting as well.

It's actually the minerals that were contained in the material itself, and wasn't something the PGMs were exposed to while being used as a catalyst.

After I made my attempt to recover the values, after another refiner had failed to do so, the person who owns the material had it assayed only to find out that there was a mineral present that encapsulated the PGMs when precipitation was attempted.

It's similar to the way I make silver nano spheres for use in another process I am working on. I make a solution of silver nitrate, raise the PH, and add polyamine which is an organic amino acid. The polyamine collects and encapsulates the silver silver in solution until the nano sphere gets to a specific size, then it actually repels the collection of more silver. By using different amino acids in this way I can precipitate different size silver nano spheres. A similar process was happening with some of the PGMs that were in solution when precipitation was attempted except that the mineral did not act like a collector, but instead only acted to encapsulate the platinum. If there was an excess of this mineral no platinum would have precipitated. If you can imagine elemental platinum in solution as having plugins of different shapes ready to accept ions with those specific shapes, then imagine a mineral attaching itself to one of those plugins, effectively preventing the elemental platinum from taking on an extra ion to turn it into a chloride so it would precipitate out of solution. In the presence of certain minerals, platinum will pick up the mineral and prevent precipitation. If Ammonium Chloride is added to the solution, the platinum that is not being affected by the other mineral will precipitate while the other will not. So all the mineral is possessed by platinum, because there is more platinum than the mineral. When Ammonium Chloride is added, some platinum precipitates but because the mineral is in the way of the elemental platinum taking on a Chloride Ion, it doesn't precipitate. This is called encapsulation, the platinum is being protected from precipitation by a mineral that gets in the way of the platinum taking on chloride.

The person who owns the material is having a very difficult time finding someone who can deal with the mess he's created. Eventually I am sure he will probably find someone interested in dealing with it, but that might not be until prices go up enough to make it profitable.

Scott

I was sent 1 lb to run as a sample from a refiner who was attempting to work with the material. I was told it was catalytic material similar to car catalytic converters. I was given an assay that was suppose to be for the material I was sent. The assay was for auto catalytic converter material, but not for the material I was attempting to work with. I didn't find out until after the fact that the material was not what the assay said it was. I then requested contact with the person who owns the material and found out it wasn't from autos, that he never had it assayed, and he wouldn't tell me where the material came from. At that point I stopped even entertaining running the material. As a refiner, if someone is not willing to disclose where the material came from, I am not willing to process it for many reasons. The main reason is the potential dangers in processing material you do not know the composition of.

I got stuck in a very nasty situation with a group of prospectors/miners who had cons they claimed were 10% PMs. What they failed to disclose was that the cons were taken from old mining tilings that had recently been subjected to cyanide leaching. Back in the late to early 1900s it was not cost affective to attempt recovering the harder to recover forms of precious metals, so they were discarded. Currently in Northern California, there are companies who are taking over the old claims and running the tilings because of the increased value of PMs.

When I attempted to roast the cons, to drive off the sulfides I was expecting a sulfur smell, what I was not expecting was the white gas, which could be any number of poisons, toxins, cyanide gas, etc. What I was not told is that they had already subjected the cons to a cyanide leach. I contacted them immediately after I figured out that there was something present other than what I was told originally. Even after demanding what else was present in the cons they still would not tell me, I had to verbally abuse them until they finally admitted attempting to do a cyanide leach, and then not washing the cons correctly.

Needless to say I will not process anything unless I know the makeup of the material prior. If I had breathed in whatever the white gas was composed of, I could very well be dead today. So when I was told by the person who owned the material, that he couldn't disclose where he got his material, I hung up the phone and have never spoken with him since.

I didn't find out until later, until the owner of the material finally had the material assayed, what the problem was with precipitating the PGMs. And then, even at that, it was the other refiner that told me what the material contained, and what mineral was making it difficult to precipitate the PGMs. Then he went further and asked me how I would process the material. Again, I didn't even entertain the thought of discussing it, I am not going to contribute to the death of someone else because they took my advice, and I gave it, without knowing exactly what the composition was. That just seems like giving a baby a loaded gun, taking the safety off, loading it, putting their finger on the trigger and expecting them not to shoot themselves. At that point I already set my mind I wasn't going to play around with the mystery material anymore.

So to answer your question, no, there wasn't an assay done, but I thought there was. I am not sure what the mix is because the owner was not willing to disclose any information and I honestly didn't care after I made my decision not to process the material. I don't see any point or value in posting how I processed the material because it didn't work very well, and I don't know what the material was actually comprised of. I do not know how the material was pyrolyzed, but again it doesn't matter, pyrolized material is pyrolized material and I doubt very seriously anything was added in order to pyrolize it so it would be the same using 10 different methods to do so, it has no bearing on how to process the material. It should never have been pyrolized, it should have been broken down into it's component parts and processed correctly. I would assume this is exactly the reason why jghilino is segregating his material, so that it can be processed correctly.

Scott

I'm going fishing, the lakes are frozen over and the fish are biting.

Are you in Mn?

I spend one week during the winter in Mn on Lake Mille Lacs. An uncle of mine who is retired, build huge ice houses that look like mobile homes, they sleep 8 people and are equipped so that 4 people can sleep next to holes in the floor, and ice fish. He used to work for Honeywell as an electrical engineer so you can imagine the setup he has, a swing arm over the hold and a tab connected to a line, into a buzzer so that when a fish bites the buzzer goes off, you wake up and pull up your super perch or walleye.

I know it doesn't sound like the adventure ice fishing is suppose to be. Attaching a portable tent ice house to your snowmobile, then dragging it to your favorite fishing spot, drilling your hole and sticking in your pole, but it is relaxing. The only thing that ever bothers me is the sound at night of the ice contracting, and cracking, and the ripping sound that seems like it goes on and on for miles while you are trying to sleep at night. That and the fact the wind chill factor can get down to the -50s make it all adventure enough for me. But I do love it, truly enjoy it, and plan on going ice fishing in Mn very soon.

Have fun, I truly envy you...

Scott

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Originally Posted by BarrenRealms007

Did he have an assay done on the material before he started this?

If so I'd be interested in knowing what it showed was in the mix. If he had this done what was supposed to be recovered in PM's?

Do you mind if I ask how much material you had to work with and what you were able to recover from the material and alos what process you used?

What was his procedure for incineration of this material?

That is correct Gustavas that the catalyst needs to come in contact for the reaction to occour. The other info you found was interesting as well.

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Something else you may enjoy reading Barren Cyanide leaching method for recovering platinum group metals from a catalytic converter catalyst - The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the

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Originally Posted by gustavus

Maybe he has a zeolite catalyst Zeolite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Zeolites, thank you, that is EXACTLY what it was. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name and was planning on contacting the refiner I originally spoke with about what the other component was.

And now I know where he's getting his material. It must be from a refinery here in the US that refines oil from the tar sands in Canada, it would make complete sense, that is the exact area he is from.

Truly I am enjoying this forum. I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to find this information. Thank you!

Scott

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

Zeolites, thank you, that is EXACTLY what it was. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name and was planning on contacting the refiner I originally spoke with about what the other component was.

And now I know where he's getting his material. It must be from a refinery here in the US that refines oil from the tar sands in Canada, it would make complete sense, that is the exact area he is from.

Truly I am enjoying this forum. I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to find this information. Thank you!

Scott

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Every precious metal known to man has been used as a catylist with zeolite.

Zeolite is also found in the pet section at y our super market KITTY LITTER WORLDS BEST CAT LITTER, ZEOLITE CAT
LITTER,AMMONIA FIGHTER,ECO FRIENDLY,HEALTHY KITTY,GET ZEOLITE

Or an Eviro Spill kit, http://www.globalspill.com/product97...neral-purpose/

What are zeolites, http://www.bza.org/zeolites.html

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Originally Posted by gustavus

Unfortunately if your contacts catylist is zeolite there are no precious metals present.

Maybe your contact could market that two tons of zeolite as post consumer KITTY LITTER WORLDS BEST CAT LITTER, ZEOLITE CAT
LITTER,AMMONIA FIGHTER,ECO FRIENDLY,HEALTHY KITTY,GET ZEOLITE

Or an Eviro Spill kit, Zeolite - General Purpose - Ground & Floor Absorbents - Spills on Land & Spill Kits - Products - Global Spill Control

What are zeolites, Zeolites

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There are precious metals involved in the mix, this is the problem, he has pyrolized different catalytic material and mixed it all up. I was able to extract silver and some PGMs.

Scott

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

There are precious metals involved in the mix, this is the problem, he has pyrolized different catalytic material and mixed it all up. I was able to extract silver and some PGMs.

Scott

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The guy is on the right track, recovery of catylist from insoluble carriers such as carbon and zeolite are best done using pyrometalurgical techniques, such as smelting. In my opinion he probably screwed up by not adding a collector metal such as copper.

Use the search feature of your pdf reader " zeolite" this document, gives a list of precious metals used as a catylist on zeolite. http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.co...lCatalysts.pdf

I'm fairly sure that is what happened. When I asked him point blank what type of catalytic material it was, because I have never seen all those metals present in one type of material before, he just answered that the came from various sources but that it shouldn't matter. He purchased a giant induction furnace that he claims he can stand it, that cost him well over a million, and then went further to name so huge industrial incinerator that he could drive a forklift into it was so huge, at the time I thought it was just talk, and I have heard in this business a lot of that. But now that I think about it, he did say he threw 200+ lbs of ceramic CPUs into his induction furnace just to see what would happen, and I think now he really did. He has more money than he knows what to do with, and likes hoarding industrial equipment. I think he incinerated lots of things and threw them all together.

Scott

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

Zeolites, thank you, that is EXACTLY what it was. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name and was planning on contacting the refiner I originally spoke with about what the other component was.

And now I know where he's getting his material. It must be from a refinery here in the US that refines oil from the tar sands in Canada, it would make complete sense, that is the exact area he is from.

Truly I am enjoying this forum. I really appreciate the time and effort it must have taken to find this information. Thank you!

Scott

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Your welcome Scott, but I'm really doing this for me, this is how I learn by researching my own material. It take forever to get an answer from an authoritative person from the gold forum. Have you read Hoke, what a joke.

Of course I've read Hoke, plus hundreds more books from open library. http://openlibrary.org/

I have read Hoke, and Ammen, and Wise, and Habashi, and Chapmen, and and and...

I read everyday about this, right now I am working my way through "The Handbook of Extractive Metallurgy" Out of print, you cannot buy it anywhere but it's probably the single most authoritative volume set of books on extractive metallurgy in the world. Over 280 professionals have contributed and it was edited by Habashi. I have been fortunate enough to have had email conversations with him. He's like the rock start of extractive metallurgy. If you want the 4 book PDF files, send me your email address and I'll send you a link from my dropbox you can grab them from.

Scott

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

I'm fairly sure that is what happened. When I asked him point blank what type of catalytic material it was, because I have never seen all those metals present in one type of material before, he just answered that the came from various sources but that it shouldn't matter. He purchased a giant induction furnace that he claims he can stand it, that cost him well over a million, and then went further to name so huge industrial incinerator that he could drive a forklift into it was so huge, at the time I thought it was just talk, and I have heard in this business a lot of that. But now that I think about it, he did say he threw 200+ lbs of ceramic CPUs into his induction furnace just to see what would happen, and I think now he really did. He has more money than he knows what to do with, and likes hoarding industrial equipment. I think he incinerated lots of things and threw them all together.

Scott

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I would think for that kind of $$$ the furnace would be outfitted with after burners and a bag house to meet EPA specs. I really don't think that he purchased that equipment on a whim.

The guys that have the money aren't going to make you rich.

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Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

I have read Hoke, and Ammen, and Wise, and Habashi, and Chapmen, and and and...

I read everyday about this, right now I am working my way through "The Handbook of Extractive Metallurgy" Out of print, you cannot buy it anywhere but it's probably the single most authoritative volume set of books on extractive metallurgy in the world. Over 280 professionals have contributed and it was edited by Habashi. I have been fortunate enough to have had email conversations with him. He's like the rock start of extractive metallurgy. If you want the 4 book PDF files, send me your email address and I'll send you a link from my dropbox you can grab them from.

Scott

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Thanks Scott