Mining platinum from road dust

June 1, 2016 7:02 AM

In which heat, chemistry and brooms show that road dust contains platinum from the slow breakdown of catalytic converters. [SLYT]
posted by clawsoon (19 comments total)

Oh cool, that's Cody, the same dude who collected diamonds from a road work project.
posted by gwint at 7:15 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wow 6g/ton of platinum is a very exploitable resource.
posted by Mitheral at 7:41 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Depends on how much of a PITA it is to collect the many tons of road dust you'd need to get a marketable amount of platinum. I really have no idea about that, mind you.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:51 AM on June 1, 2016

this kind of thing should be shown to chemistry students. it's a pretty neat example of the practical applications of basic inorganic chemistry. i wish i could remember enough chemistry to actually use it.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:44 AM on June 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Wow 6g/ton of platinum is a very exploitable resource.
posted by Mitheral at 9:41 AM on June 1

And no need to run your ore through a ball mill!
posted by Bee'sWing at 8:59 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I added Cody's channel to my RSS reader earlier this year. It's an interesting grab bag of topics; I particularly like the various precious metal refining videos (like this one), but also just all kinds of random stuff like beekeeping (lots of that), making heavy water, mining, making gunpowder the old fashioned way (urine), dyeing a shirt the old fashioned way, radioactive sample collecting, etc.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:08 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

hunh. so united states' roads aren't paved with gold, but with platinum?
posted by eustatic at 9:10 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rhomboid: I added Cody's channel to my RSS reader earlier this year.

Now that I'm poking around his channel some more, I'm thinking I should've made the FPP about him, and included a lot more videos. A lot of what he does appears to be tied together by the fact that he really, really wants to go to Mars, plus the fact that he's an awesome guy with a nervous giggle who likes doing stuff.
posted by clawsoon at 9:19 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

A lot of what he does appears to be tied together by the fact that he really, really wants to go to Mars….

I'd put him in my crew. You need to have a few generalists in there, and he seems like he has the riggt attitude.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:35 AM on June 1, 2016

Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The: "Depends on how much of a PITA it is to collect the many tons of road dust you'd need to get a marketable amount of platinum. "

Street sweeper. You'd want one of the units with vacuums designed for porous surfaces.
posted by Mitheral at 9:52 AM on June 1, 2016

That sounds like an excellent idea, Mitheral. You may have found a permanent solution for funding MetaFilter.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:54 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd put him in my crew. You need to have a few generalists in there, and he seems like he has the right attitude.

Yeah he's no botanist but he seems like the kind of guy that can science the shit out of a problem.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:05 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

So: buy/build a fleet of specially adapted street-sweeping trucks, and offer your street-cleaning services to local governments at a steep discount if not for free, and then sit back as the profits flow in?
posted by acb at 10:12 AM on June 1, 2016

he really, really wants to go to Mars

Yeah. For such an otherwise smart guy to fall for the Mars One thing is just so sad. He's a true believer, and has done videos defending it and everything.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:17 AM on June 1, 2016

Platinum's trading at $31.71 per gram today; each ton of road dust processed (assuming near 100% efficiency, or that 6g is what you can pull out) will gross you $190 worth of platinum.
posted by porpoise at 12:55 PM on June 1, 2016

It's tough to tell how viable this would be relative to mining. The cost of ore acquisition in this case is very low compared to conventional mining. And as Bee'sWing said you wouldn't have to run a crusher and mill. On the other hand there might not be much secondary products like you often get with regular mining and I bet your tailings would be more difficult than usual to deal with containing all sorts of heavy metals. And transport costs of the "ore" might be prohibitive considering how many miles it is spread over. Of course if you can get Highways departments to pay you to do the recovery that becomes a plus.

As a reality check:

For example, in South Africa, PGM-bearing ores generally
have a low PGM content of between 2 and 6 grams per tonne and it will typically take up to six months and between 10 and 40 tonnes of ore to produce one ounce (31.1035g) of platinum.

Most of the PGM mines in South Africa operate at a depth below 500 metres and up to 2 kilometres. Their orebodies are tabular and narrow, varying in width between 0.9 metres and 2.1 metres and requiring labour-intensive mining techniques. PGM ore is drilled and broken with explosives before being removed through mechanical transportation methods to the surface; electricity consumption is high, not only for ore haulage but also to drive compressed air to the miners’ hand-held pneumatic drills and, because the hard rock in platinum mines has a high thermal gradient, to refrigerate the working areas.

posted by Mitheral at 1:25 PM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

Mitheral: On the other hand there might not be much secondary products like you often get with regular mining and I bet your tailings would be more difficult than usual to deal with containing all sorts of heavy metals.

Looks like it's the other products in street sweepings that have been recycled first.

According to the company, on average the system is processing 50 to 75 tonnes of material per day, with higher volumes during particularly busy periods. The system is capable of processing up to 10 to 15 tonnes per hour.

posted by clawsoon at 2:21 PM on June 1, 2016

This doesn't seem like a very environmentally friendly process, with all that vaporized lead.
posted by mubba at 6:36 PM on June 1, 2016

This process isn't the only way to smelt platinum and of course large scale industry would have controls in place. Honestly I'm a little surprised that mercury wasn't used somewhere along the way.
posted by Mitheral at 8:38 PM on June 1, 2016