The Russian economy annually loses about 5 billion rubles with automobile dead catalysts.
A study conducted by the Metallurgy of Precious Metals Group (GK MBM), showed that 2.5 tons of catalysts containing about 5 tons of platinoids - platinum, palladium and rhodium - are thrown out at dump sites every year in Russia group metals. For comparison: about 20 tons of platinum were produced in Russia in 2012.
«The shortage of platinum group metals remains on the market. Obviously, the recycling of metals from waste is necessary. It would be logical to fill this lack from the secondary market. However, the Russian autocatalyst recycling program actually does not work, because there is no tradition of post-consumer recycling, technology which is successfully used in Western countries, there is no motivation for the population and the most important - there is no support at the legislative level,” said Svetlana Ozhigova, CEO of GK Metallurgy of Precious Metals.
Moreover, there is no control in Russia over the use of autocatalysts. The MBM estimated that about 90% of Russian cars ride with the old catalysts, polluting the air with carbon monoxide and nitrogen.
Finally, a dead catalyst has the third class of danger, and in accordance with the Russian environmental laws it must not be thrown away on a dump site.
In this regard, the GK MBM intends to open the official collection points of spent catalysts for further use of its own processing technology. The company’s know-how is a development of the unique melting furnace, a part of the recycling equipment, for extraction of precious metals from processed raw materials. The processing conditions and prices are comparable to Europeans.