from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
An increase in the consumption of platinum in the automotive industry is related to the growing number of cars manufactured. Modern and well-used equipment of this type which is fitted as standard in cars should work for at least 8·107 - 9·107 metres. When worn, they are considered as waste being a valuable source of platinum-group metals (platinum, palladium and rhodium) which act as catalysts in catalytic converters. The management of spent catalytic converters helps to reduce the amount of waste disposed as well as to lower the emission of pollution to the air in relation to the processes involving obtaining such metals in the production technologies from raw materials. Various hydrometallurgical, pyrometallurgical or mixed methods are used for the recovery of noble metals from spent catalytic converters. The purpose of the article is to present an experimental method for the recovery of noble metals from spent catalytic converters. This method involves flushing of spent catalytic converters with a liquid collector metal with the use of a magneto-hydro-dynamic pump for the intensification of the process and is applied to recover platinum from catalytic converters by melting them (collecting) in the liquid metal. In the paper the optimization of the operation of the system for the recovery of platinum-group metals which is essential in the light of later commercialization of the solution is proposed.
Keywords: Spent automotive catalysts, PGM recovery, thermal efficiency© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.