Palladium and platinum recovery?

Steve Goldstein · Jul 16, 2019

Is there any practical way for the low-volume home printer to recover platinum and/or palladium from the brush rinse water and from the clearing bath? It seems a shame to flush it down the drain.....

nmp · Jul 17, 2019

Steve Goldstein said:
Is there any practical way for the low-volume home printer to recover platinum and/or palladium from the brush rinse water and from the clearing bath? It seems a shame to flush it down the drain.....

Shouldn't some FO with the help of the Sun precipitate the metals? Or may be some ferrous sulfate by itself.

Vaughn · Jul 17, 2019

Contact the folks at Bostick and Sullivan.

koraks · Jul 18, 2019

Steve Goldstein said:
practical way for the low-volume home printer

I don't think so. We're talking milligrams in fairly large volumes of water contaminated with all sorts of additional compounds. To make matters worse, Pt and Pd may be both present alongside each other and they'll probably be quite difficult to separate to begin with.
Provided you could actually separate out the noble metals, you'd still have to convert them to usable salts to be able to reuse them, and the chemistry involved is typically not something you'd want to do around the house.

Ian Leake · Jul 18, 2019

koraks said:
I don't think so. We're talking milligrams in fairly large volumes of water contaminated with all sorts of additional compounds. To make matters worse, Pt and Pd may be both present alongside each other and they'll probably be quite difficult to separate to begin with.
Provided you could actually separate out the noble metals, you'd still have to convert them to usable salts to be able to reuse them, and the chemistry involved is typically not something you'd want to do around the house.

I agree. (But I’d love to be able to do this so if any chemists have smart ideas then I’d love to hear them.)

Michael Meacham · Jul 26, 2019

Electroysis might plate them out on one of the electrodes. If so, you could sell them, possibly, to one of the precious metal companies. They would probably be mixed together.

Sirius Glass · Jul 26, 2019

Vaughn said:
Contact the folks at Bostick and Sullivan.

Also Photographers' Formulary.

Vaughn · Jul 26, 2019

Bostick and Sullivan make their own platinum chemicals out of platinum coins. They may also buy platinum 'waste'. Worth exploring.

Palladium and platinum recovery?

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