DETERMINATION OF PLATINUM, PALLADIUM AND RHODIUM BY NICKEL SULPHIDE FIRE ASSAY (PRE-CONCENTRATION) METHOD AND ITS OPTIMIZATION

Year 2014, Volume: 32 Issue: 2, 211 - 220, 01.06.2014

Mehmet Hakan Morcalı Süleyman Akman Onuralp Yücel

Abstract

The growing use of platinum, palladium and rhodium (PGM) in metallurgy, jewelry and chemical industrial applications results in the necessity of fast and accurate a method for the determination of PGM, not only in natural sources, but also in recyclable materials, such as concentrates, anode slime, polish waste and catalytic converters. In this study, the performance of the nickel sulphide (NiS) fire assay of PGM from mixtures of catalytic converters (e.g., gasoline and diesel engine catalytic converters) is investigated by assessing the effects of various flux ratios and reaction parameters on metals recovery. We found that optimum recovery was achieved with 57.5 g of flux (0.40 w/w ratio, B2O3:Na2O), 6.36 g (as 5 g Ni) nickel oxide and 5 g sulfur (1.0 w/w ratio, Ni:S) for five gram of sample, reacted for 90 min at 975°C. To identify the optimum condition, reference standards such as NIST SRM 2557 (honeycomb type) were used to compare efficiencies; the results were consistent with certified values. It is proposed that a method to isolate at least 99% of the Pd, Pt, and Rh present in catalytic converters.

Keywords

Nickel sulfide, fire assay, platinum, palladium, rhodium.

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