Platinum Recovery from Road Dust
Recovers scarce and valuable commodity Reduces amount mining for PGM ores and environmental impact Reduces landfill; platinum extracted road dust can be used as an inert filler
Catalytic converters reduce the emissions of harmful pollutants in vehicle exhaust gases. The catalyst is usually a precious metal such as platinum which over time is released from the catalytic converter in minute amounts and can be found in roadside dust. PGMs are scarce natural resources for example one ounce of platinum is extracted from 10 tones of ore. Measurement of roadside dust has shown concentration of platinum of about 1ppm. Workers at the University of Birmingham have developed a method for increasing the concentration in road dust making recovery of platinum from this waste, which currently is dumped to landfill, potentially economically viable.
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