Platinum Lake to test PGM-winning technology

Canada may soon have another platinum group metal (PGM) producer.

COATS-listed Platinum Lake Technology is well financed to test a new leaching method for recycling PGMs in catalytic converters from scrapped cars. The technology has never been tested in a production mode.

The first PGM-coated beads from such converters should be run this September through a prototype facility being built in Mississauga, Ont., the company says.

The small, $1.2-million prototype plant, designed to handle five tonnes of material per day, is being built at the Ontario Research Foundation’s facilities at Sheridan Park.

Platinum Lake is funding about half of the cost of the project and the National Research Council is putting up $608,000.

“The process is deceptively simple,” Technical Director John Ryder says. It was developed in Canada by Abraham Truss, a company director, and has been licensed to Comlabs, a publically-listed company in Australia, and to Quakeage Ltd. in England. Patents are pending

The process has the awkward name of CRO/REDOX, short for Catalyzed Reagent Organic Redox Hydrometallurgical Leaching System.

Basically it is a proprietary chlorine-based leaching system a potential alternative to cyanide in the leaching of precious metals. But Platinum Lake wants to tackle the far more lucrative autocatalyst market where grades average 13 oz platinum, 4 oz palladium and 2 oz rhodium per tonne of catalyst substrate.

Platinum Lake estimates there are nine million cars scrapped every year in North America, 90% of which are equipped with catalytic converters.

Although the company will not know how much it costs to produce an oz of precious metal until the plant has been operating for about 12 months, Ryder says it will likely be comparable to existing technologies.

“About 25-30% of the value of the contained metal in the material to be processed goes to operating costs and profits,” he says. The other 70-75% goes to pay for the substrates.

A solvent extraction process patented by the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology will be evaluated as a means to up-grade the end product from the leaching circuit.

Over-all recoveries have been better than 90% in bench-scale testing.

The main advantage of the new process is a fast turn-around time. A precious metals salt, suitable to be sold to any refinery, can be had in 24 hours from the time the material enters the leach columns.

Platinum Lake completed an initial public financing last month to net the company $1.2 million. The offering consisted of 860,000 shares and an equal number of half- warrants, two of which are needed to buy one common share at $2.20 on July 31, 1989.