Why is the recycling of automobile exhaust so interesting, and especially the the catalytic exhaust ?
A catalytic converter is an exhaust emission control device that converts toxic gases and pollutants in exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine into less-toxic pollutants. To success this conversion, precious metals like Platinium, Gold, Silver, Rhodium are used. Theese rare earth materials are located in the ceramic honeycomb structure of the exhaust.
So, how much money can we expect from catalytic exhaust recycling ?
Well, this can vary a lot : last week I spoke with a salesman from a company named "Morphosis" in West France; He told me that last year in some case they could win about 3 Millions Euros by the recycling of 1 Ton catalytic exhaust !
If you consider that the weight of a catalytic converter is about 10 Kg, that means with just 100 converter you may become a millionar !
That's depend on the model, type and year production. As far as I learned, in the mid of the 90' a new classical catalytic converter could contain up to 1.5 Grams of Rhodium, up to 5 Grams of Palladium, and up to 7 Grams of Platinium. With just this 3 elements that's already 1010 Euros.
The Rhodhium has raised a lot since the beginning of the Pandemic (Up to 765.000 USD/Kg in February 2021) / see below the chart :
