Why is recycling catalytic converters important for recovering platinum-group metals?

Recycling catalytic converters is essential because they contain the bulk of the world's available platinum, palladium, and rhodium scrap.1

Recovering these metals from automotive exhaust systems is a critical industrial process that involves melting the catalyst at high temperatures with iron or copper. This procedure fuses the catalyst substrate and dissolves the precious metals into the molten metal. The resulting alloy is then leached to remove the iron or copper, leaving behind a concentrated mixture of platinum-group metals that can be refined into pure elements.1

Given the high demand for these metals in petroleum refining and automotive emission control, recycling provides a vital secondary source for these chemical elements, ensuring the continued availability of materials that are otherwise difficult and energy-intensive to isolate from primary ore deposits.123