The percentage of carbon in alumina and silica-alumina precious metals (PM) catalysts sent for reclamation remains alarmingly high.
The long-term repercussions of contamination in precious metal spent catalysts
Some of the incoming material contains over 40% carbon, a fact confirmed by numerous PM refining companies worldwide. This issue is likely due to a combination of reduced in-situ pre-reclaim burning, extended process run times, and/or more challenging feed stocks. Delays in maintenance and turnarounds experienced during the COVID years exacerbated the issue, but the high carbon problem predates the pandemic and continues to be quite troublesome and costly. Decisions on feed stock selection and run time analysis will always be technically driven; however, the PM recycling stakeholders (both the catalyst owners and the PM reclaimers) need to focus on eliminating the dilemma of this excess carbon and coke during the PM reclaim phase.
In situ pre-burn and the perception of cost savings
Recent customer case studies show that in-situ, pre-reclaim burn costs can easily exceed $8.00 per lb., and suffice to say that precious metals reclaimers are charging much less than that. This would seem to indicate that outsourcing the carbon removal is a cost-savings as it allows a faster return to production for the unit being turned-around, but this front-end view fails to calculate the expenses incurred for the extended wait time to receive the precious metal return.
- Increased wait times for final precious metals return
○ Catalysts that are received clean, that is, with carbon, coke, benzene, moisture, etc. all within acceptable tolerances, proceed directly to sampling. The typical settlement time (that is, the final return of the precious metal value) for these relatively clean materials is generally three to four months.
○ The settlement time when kilning can be nearly three times that long. In extreme cases, heavily coked catalysts (over 20% or so) require second or even third runs through the kilning process to reduce the carbon sufficiently. This timeframe includes waiting their turn in line for kilning and the kilning time itself.
○ For those leasing platinum or palladium, rates remain quite elevated and availability of metal in the market is becoming very tight. With leasing costs sometimes exceeding $1500.00 per day, the perceived carbon mitigation ‘savings’ evaporate very quickly.
- ‘Trapped’ precious metals
○ The PGM ounces within the backlog at the kilning pinch-point have been removed from market circulation for the length of the backlog.
○ Double trouble in the PGM (platinum group metals) market:
• Approximately 90% of all palladium and rhodium (and 40% of all platinum) that is above ground is in the form of automotive catalysts (catalytic converters).
• Since late 2021 / early 2022, palladium and rhodium have lost roughly 75% of their market value. Collectors and recyclers are therefore hoarding autocatalysts, waiting for a price recovery, which effectively stalls the return of those PGM ounces to the market as well.
• The silicon carbide and tungsten added to automotive catalyst in recent years to achieve greater pollutant removal, has created recycling and recovery issues: specialized processing is now necessary, there are only a few places that can mitigate these “contaminants”, and this further traps PGM ounces in inventories as they wait their turn.
The long-term repercussions of contamination in precious metal spent catalysts
The take-away
There would appear to be a limited number of possible corrective actions:
- The PGM reclaimers could continue to add kiln capacity, but that will not achieve full correction and will almost certainly mean higher pricing.
- PGM reclaimers could raise their kilning prices to near or the same level as the cost of in-situ pre-reclaim burning, the catalysts users will re-evaluate shipping the cat dirty. Current out-sourced kilning services (the regenerators that do not refine precious metals) are already charging double the going PM refinery kiln rate or more.
- Catalyst owners could calculate the overall cost of skipping the in-situ burn and start making this process the norm again. Client companies can only realize savings by looking across a number of functional departments and areas of responsibility…so these types of decisions would have to come from greater inter-departmental communication and data-sharing, and potentially the ‘big picture’ viewpoint that comes from a higher level of management.
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