Sulfuric Acid Dissolution of Carriers for Recovering Platinum from the Spent Petroleum Catalysts

Spent catalysts containing platinum were generated in petroleum refinery and other chemical industries. The reclamation of platinum metals from such wastes has long been attempted in view of their rare, expensive and indispensable nature. In this study, the recovery of platinum from petroleum catalysts was attempted by a method consisting mainly of dissolving alumina carrier with sulfuric acid thereby concentrating insoluble platinum. Also, platinum dissolved partially in sulfuric acid was recovered by a cementation method using aluminum metal as a reductive agent. The effect of temperature, time, concentration of sulfuric acid, and pulp density on the dissolution of carrier was investigated. When the carrier of platinum catalyst was O about 95% alumina was dissolved in 6.0 M sulfuric acid at for 2 hours. When the carrier was the mixture of and - about 92% was dissolved after 4 hours. As a result, more than 99% of platinum could be recovered by this method and aluminum sulfate was also obtained as byproduct.