PROJECTS
PLATIRUS Project Description
The PLATIRUS project aims at reducing the European deficit of Platinum Group Metals (PGMs), by upscaling to industrial relevant levels a novel cost-efficient and miniaturized PGMs recovery and raw material production process. The targeted secondary raw materials will be autocatalysts, electronic waste (WEEE) and tailings and slags from nickel and copper smelters, opening-up an important range of alternative sources of these critical raw materials, with the potential to substitute a large amount of primary raw materials which are becoming more and more scarce in Europe.
For the first time five of the major research centers in Europe collaborated in developing and fine tuning the most advanced recovery processes for PGMs. This joint effort led to a unique exchange of know-how and best practices between researchers all over Europe, aiming at the selection of the recycling process and the preparation of the Blueprint Process Design that set the basis for a new PGM supply chain in the EU.
MONOLITHOS participation role
MONOLITHOS collected the autocatalysts for the project purposes, taking advantage its established network. Furthermore, performed physicochemical characterization during the pre-processing as well as final characterization. The preprocessing characterization aimed to:
- Provide access to the consortium to the Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) containing by-products.
- Pre-process the by-products in order to obtain the suitable physical (e.g. fineness) and chemical characteristics (e.g. homogenization) before being processed by the novel PGM recovery metallurgical technologies.
Recycled Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) were used in order to successfully produce Three-Way-Catalytic Converters (TWCs ) and Diesel Oxidation Catalysts (DOCs) by MONOLITHOS. The innovative catalysts were successfully validated in real life conditions.
Collaborators
