New Recycle Technology for Platinum Group Metals

Mitsubishi Materials, Mitsubishi Corporation and Furuya Metal announced on Thursday they cooperate to develop new technology to recycle platinum group metals (PGMs) from catalyst scrap. The new recycling technology will be developed toward 2008 based on Mitsubishi Materials’ copper smelting technology and Furuya Metal’s PGM manufacturing technology. Mitsubishi Corp will help the new technology with its dealing know-how for precious metals.PGMs, such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium, offer high resistance to heat and corrosion as well as catalytic and magnetic functions. PGMs are utilized for chemical catalysts, automotive exhaust catalysts, refractory linings for glass making, electronic materials and magnetic recording materials.The demand is also expected to increase for fuel batteries and hard disc’s recording layers. On the other hand, there are few substitute materials and technologies for PGMs. The demand is in growth trend.