One-Step Separation of Platinum, Palladium, and Rhodium: A Three-Liquid-Phase Extraction Approach

Recent Developments on Processes for Recovery of Rhodium Metal from Spent Catalysts

Rhodium (Rh) catalyst has played an indispensable role in many important industrial and technological applications due to its unique and valuable properties. Currently, Rh is considered as a strategic or critical metal as the scarce high-quality purity can only be supplemented by refining coarse ores with low content (2–10 ppm) and is far from meeting the fast-growing market demand. Nowadays, exploring new prospects has already become an urgent issue because of the gradual depletion of Rh resources, incidental pressure on environmental protection, and high market prices. Since waste catalyst materials, industrial equipment, and electronic instruments contain Rh with a higher concentration than that of natural minerals, recovering Rh from scrap not only offers an additional source to satisfy market demand but also reduces the risk of ore over-exploitation. Therefore, the recovery of Rh-based catalysts from scrap is of great significance. This review provides an overview of the Rh metal recovery from spent catalysts. The characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of several current recovery processes, including pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and biosorption technology, are presented and compared. Among them, the hydrometallurgical process is commonly used for Rh recovery from auto catalysts due to its technological simplicity, low cost, and short processing time, but the overall recovery rate is low due to its high remnant Rh within the insoluble residue and the unstable leaching. In contrast, higher Rh recovery and less effluent discharge can be ensured by a pyrometallurgical process which therefore is widely employed in industry to extract precious metals from spent catalysts. However, the related procedure is quite complex, leading to an expensive hardware investment, high energy consumption, long recovery cycles, and inevitable difficulties in controlling contamination in practice. Compared to conventional recovery methods, the biosorption process is considered to be a cost-effective biological route for Rh recovery owing to its intrinsic merits, e.g., low operation costs, small volume, and low amount of chemicals and biological sludge to be treated. Finally, we summarize the challenges and prospect of these three recovery processes in the hope that the community can gain more meaningful and comprehensive insights into Rh recovery.

Successive preconcentration and mechanistic investigation of Au(iii), Pd(ii), Pt(iv) and Rh(iii) via cloud point extraction using a functionalised ionic liquid

This study proposes the efficient separation of Au(iii)/Pd(ii)/Pt(iv)/Rh(iii) through the 2-mercaptobenzothiazole-functionalised ionic liquid ([C6mim][2MBT]) using a cloud point extraction system.

Mutual Separation of Fe(II) and Fe(III) Using Cyclohexane/Water/Ionic-liquid Triphasic Extraction System with 2,2'-Bipyridine and Tri-n-octylphosphine Oxide

The triphasic extraction system with two extract phases can be used to separate two materials simultaneously into each phase. In this article, a possible mutual separation of Fe(II) and Fe(III) was studied using the cyclohexane/water/ionic liquid (IL) triphasic extraction system for Fe speciation. For Fe(II) and Fe(III) extraction, 2,2'-bipyridine (bpy) and tri-n-octylphosphine oxide (TOPO) were selected as extractants, respectively. It was suggested that [FeII(bpy)3]2+ and FeIII(TOPO)43+·3Tf2N- were extracted into the IL (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, C4mimTf2N) phase and the cyclohexane phase, respectively, and both of the extractants also acted as masking agents. On simultaneous separation using the triphasic system, Fe(II) and Fe(III) were quantitatively extracted into the IL phase and the cyclohexane phase, respectively, and their mutual separation was achieved.

Selective recovery of palladium from waste printed circuit boards by a novel non-acid process

An environmental benign, non-acid process was successfully developed for selective recovery of palladium from waste printed circuit boards (PCBs). In the process, palladium was firstly enriched during copper recovery procedure and dissolved in a special solution made of CuSO4 and NaCl. The dissolved palladium was then extracted by diisoamyl sulfide (S201). It was found that 99.4% of Pd(II) could be extracted from the solution under the optimum conditions (10% S201, A/O ratio 5 and 2min extraction). In the whole extraction process, the influence of base metals was negligible due to the relatively weak nucleophilic substitution of S201 with base metal irons and the strong steric hindrance of S201 molecular. Around 99.5% of the extracted Pd(II) could be stripped from S201/dodecane with 0.1mol/L NH3 after a two-stage stripping at A/O ratio of 1. The total recovery percentage of palladium was 96.9% during the dissolution-extraction-stripping process. Therefore, this study established a benign and effective process for selective recovery of palladium from waste printed circuit boards.