Need Help With Metals In Catalytic Converter Hunny Comb

yeah I'm just doing it myself for the enjoyment and want to collect and save up on the metals

Shroombud, interesting what you are trying to accomplish.

My advice is to get it assayed
cost is usually $25 at most refineries. They will tell you how much of each metal is in you're batch.

As for refining, unless you have some expensive equipment, and a back ground in metal refining/chemistry I would not attempt it. You're best bet is just an assay or selling it to a refinery.

The honeycomb structure inside a catalytic converter is not solid precious metal; that would be way too expensive for any car manufacturer to employ. A typical converter is made of three components: the underlying structural component, or "substrate", is either ceramic or a steel alloy. Then a "washcoat" of something coarse and powdery, such as alumina, titanium dioxide or silica is sprayed on to increase the surface area. Finally, a very thin layer of precious metal is deposited on top. There's typically only about 3 to 7 grams of platinum to be found. So if you've extracted the honeycomb and crushed it up into powder or just scraped off the top layers, what you've got is dust, with a trace amount of platinum in it.

Refining platinum and other platinum-group metals is not a simple process; it's much harder and more dangerous than refining gold or silver. Platinum does not melt, not at temperatures you can get in a backyard furnace at any rate. The substrate and washcoat would melt at about the same temperature as the platinum, so even if you did get the temperature that high the "dust" would melt into slag, trapping your platinum particles forever inside a block of glass. You need to remove the platinum by chemical means (dissolving in hot aqua regia ought to do it) and then re-precipitate it from solution. But I seriously doubt there'll be enough platinum in that jar of dust to get anything measurable out at the other end.

A metal recycling plant fitted out to do catalytic converters probably places the entire honeycomb into the acid intact. That way they don't have to worry about separating out the dust when they're done.

If there really was money in melting catalytic converters on your own... people would be stealing them already.

Depends on where you live, what you drive...and where the thief goes to dump them;

Catalytic converter thefts rev up

http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/lo...b2963f4.html