PLATIRUS - Sustainable recovery of platinum group metals

Описание: In a world with rapidly reducing resources, recycling and circular technologies are key. Europe is the region with the highest demand of Platinum group metals for industrial use with an annual demand of 150 tons, worth around 7.5 Billion euro.

But more than 80% of the supply comes from South Africa and Russian mines making Europe highly dependent on import.

In PLATIRUS, we create sustainable recovery of Platinum group metals to head to a new supply chain and security of supply for the European industries.

Platinum group metals, or PGMs for short, consist of 6 elements: iridium, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhodium and ruthenium. While they are among the least abundant earth’s elements, PGMs are high in demand and widely used in jewellery, automobile and electronics industries worldwide.

Apart from traditional mining, PGMs can be also acquired through conventional recycling methods that are highly energy-intensive, expensive and harmful for the environment.

To tackle this and build PGMs security for Europe, PLATIRUS has researched and developed green innovative recovery solutions that provide more efficient and sustainable supply of these precious elements.

PLATIRUS could separate and recover PGMs from end-of-life autocatalyst, slag and waste from electric and electronic equipment using different treatment and downstream processing technologies based on 3 main processing steps: leaching, separation and recovery.

A total of 11 PLATIRUS innovative technologies were explored and developed to recover PGMs from secondary sources. Microwave assisted leaching, non-conventional liquid extraction, and gas diffusion electro-crystallization technologies have been evaluated with the highest recovery, environmental impact, flexibility, low cost and compact size. These 3 selected PLATIRUS green technologies successfully recovered PGMs from secondary resources and demonstrated that it is possible to use those recycled PGMs to manufacture new autocatalysts.

The deployment of PLATIRUS’ compact size and low cost technologies will allow to optimise the recycling of PGMs, increase resource efficiency and produce brand new sustainable products with a lower CO2 footprint. It will reduce the EU’s current dependence on PGMs by filling the supply gap up to 30%, diversify the supply chain and make Europe competitive, while preserving the environment.

PLATIRUS novel and sustainable solutions for recovering PGMs from secondary sources are a joint work of 11 academic and commercial partners across Europe, supported by the European Union.
Find out more on: www.platirus.eu

Copyright of the project lies within the PLATIRUS consortium.