What You Need to Know about Environmentally Friendly Platinum Refining
If you have platinum scrap to refine, you could deliver it to a platinum refinery near where you live, walk away with a check for the amount of platinum that the refinery estimates your scrap contains, and never give it a second thought.
But as someone who respects the environment, you don’t want to do that. You have no way of knowing how that refinery you found will recover the platinum your scrap contains. Will they use classic smelting processes and simply heat your scrap to recover the metals it contains – and release noxious gases into the environment? Will they immerse your scrap in strong chemicals to separate platinum from the other metals it contains – which will again release poisonous gases into the air and possibly create liquid pollutants that should be disposed of according to government-mandated protocols – or will those poisons just be sent down the drain?
Both mining platinum and recycling platinum-bearing scrap can harm the environment if they are done incorrectly.
If you want to reclaim the platinum your scrap contains in the most environmentally responsible ways possible, here is some information you need to know.
How Is Platinum Extracted from Scrap?
Pyrometallurgy is one method. In this process, your scrap is heated to a very high temperature, as high as 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. Another way of looking at this process is that your scrap is exposed to such high temperatures that it actually burns.
Electrochemical dissolution is another method. Different chemicals are used to effectively dissolve your scrap into a solution which can then be subjected to different chemical processes that separate the platinum from other elements and chemicals.
Those two processes – heating and chemical treatments – are the two basic ways a refinery could use to extract platinum from the scrap you want to process.
How Can Environmental Risks Be Minimized?
Both super-heating scrap and plunging it into a noxious bath of strong chemicals can present serious risks to air and wastewater, not to mention to the technicians who manage the processes. A variety of poisons can be released, ranging from arsenic to cyanide to mercury, which is a common byproduct of the recycling process.
A modern, advanced precious metal refinery like Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners takes the correct steps to capture and neutralize noxious gases in a controlled, sealed environment. And when harmful liquids are byproducts of the refining processes, we store and dispose of them in compliance with all local and federal environmental laws.
The take-away lesson is that when you trust your refining and reclaiming to a modern facility like ours, you can be assured that you will be protecting the environment from the many hazards that can result from haphazard, dirty recyclers.
It’s a Dirty, Dirty World Out There
Mining is an inherently dirty process that contributes to polluting air and water and so is scrap processing. But you don’t need to contribute to those problems every time you want to recycle your platinum scrap.
Call our precious metal recycling experts at 800-426-2344 to be sure you are having your scrap processed the right way.
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