Dismantler refining directly possible? - Page 2

Originally Posted by Porsche993

Were going off topic here guys......
Is there no "Middlemen" here on the forums with some straight answers?
I have delt with middlemen and have spoken to several that gave actual numbers of what they pay and what they get after refining, this is the whole point of this post. Why give up that difference. one example is cat 1432446 was paying $503 by a "Middleman" when at the time of asking was refining for just under $860.... Do you guys get my drift? If you have hundreds of cats thats a big hit to take.

I gave you my answer, the numbers mean nothing only an assay will reveal the true value and it's not economically feasible to have a $300.00 assay done on a single catalytic converter.

I find it difficult to believe you've been in the scrap business for 15 years and have no concept of the benefits of dealing in large volumes.

You're now coming across as a pissant you insist on being spoon fed.

Below is the ball mill that I use to mill cat comb into powder for shipping to the refinery.

Originally Posted by Porsche993

Were going off topic here guys......
Is there no "Middlemen" here example is cat 1432446 was paying $503 by a "Middleman" when at the time of asking was refining for just under $860..

That cat number 1432446 comes up as BMW an import. FYI imports are loaded extra heavy with precious metals - the why is because the manufacture finds it more economical to give an extra loading of precious metals to exceed warranty.
.
While vehicles made in North America manufactures are able to deal with warranty on their own soil.

I'm not sure why you thought it was a dig on you, but your information was not correct, that's it. There are more than two refiners and our price indexing is not export volume demand right now. A half an hour in front of the google machine looking at indexes and futures can confirm everything I said.

Clearly you arent looking because there is a pgm refiner in Chicago, another in Ohio, another in New york and yes they are all on google to be found. I dont deal with them directly, volume reasons, since at any given time the most I have on hand is half a gaylord, they want trucks full of converters, not lowly me. But one of them I do use for boards as well. Heck you have a pgm company based out of japan that operates in California as well, and they have youtube videos, again easily searchable.

Im not derailing this any further.

Originally Posted by Porsche993

@alloy2 not trying to step on any feet but the answer went over my head. You keep mentioning 1 catalytic, I am not sure where I ever said we are talking about 1. The person I am trying to help has a business and does not have time to take hundreds of cats and do the process you speak of. I am trying to see if anyone who is a cat buyer/collector or whatever has went down the path of getting them refined to get full potential value.

I'll keep it simple, sell your cats to APA a long standing forum member with a positive buyers reputation that others will vouch for.

Originally Posted by Porsche993

@armygreywolf, So it seems you may have gone thru the same thing as I am trying to figure out. Did you reach out to the refiners and they turned you down? What do you do with the converters? Sell them to middlemen?

I deal with a refiner for by board scrap, it still takes me a while to accrue the weights they require but thats what we do. Cats are no different. Except it takes me much MUCH longer to acquire enough weight. It's not my specialty, our primary source for PGMs is industrial catalysts and we deal with that a few times a year, so when we do our regular outbound I send my partial gaylord box of cats along with it.

Its a matter of math, and the big players that buy cats here will tell you the same thing, the refiner wants 40,000lbs of combs to give you the best possible prices and the most accurate returns. It can be labor intensive and machine intensive at scale too so more weight is better for everyone.

Please don't do what Alloy is doing if those are his pictures. This forum is supposed to ban advocacy of using chemical processing for safety reasons and because of the venue, people at random can see and search this with no experience in staying safe. We just had a lung scarring case at my wife's hospital trying to home game with chemical refining. I dont know what he was doing outside of home gamer caustics.

If your person has a high level of confidence in what they are buying, such as pricing from available catalogs, then yes, you can enhance your returns decanning and sending the combs out to a known refiner. Most have a 10,000lb minimum for PGMs, some will do 80 or 85% of assay value down to 2500lbs or so. It depends on who your dealing with. But ask the pertinent questions, note Alloy's assay, (although the presence of gold might mean he had other things in the assay material?) the point is make sure you get a clear answer on what materials they will recover and what they agree to pay by percent OR what the per lb charge is. Its not going to be like PCBs where high weights usually get you below the one dollar a pound refining cost...so you really need an answer to those questions on paper.

Anyways, he missed some major refiners, BASF is out in South Carolina, up until recently they only really did filter cake and industrial catalysts, but they can process combs too. Another option if you would rather the refiner do the decanning and provide you with assays by group (They have done it for us on oil refinery catalysts) GRG West is in north los vegas, they are also owned by a company that does cat buying, so lots of their work is already known value. Same as before though, you need to produce material quantity they are looking for, which is A LOT.

I'm not hear to step on toes or make people mad, there's enough of that to go around already. My goal is to do as much domestically as we can get away with. Foreign exchange of commodities always detracts.

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

I deal with a refiner for by board scrap, it still takes me a while to accrue the weights they require but thats what we do. Cats are no different. Except it takes me much MUCH longer to acquire enough weight. It's not my specialty, our primary source for PGMs is industrial catalysts and we deal with that a few times a year, so when we do our regular outbound I send my partial gaylord box of cats along with it.

Its a matter of math, and the big players that buy cats here will tell you the same thing, the refiner wants 40,000lbs of combs to give you the best possible prices and the most accurate returns. It can be labor intensive and machine intensive at scale too so more weight is better for everyone.

Please don't do what Alloy is doing if those are his pictures. This forum is supposed to ban advocacy of using chemical processing for safety reasons and because of the venue, people at random can see and search this with no experience in staying safe. We just had a lung scarring case at my wife's hospital trying to home game with chemical refining. I dont know what he was doing outside of home gamer caustics.

If your person has a high level of confidence in what they are buying, such as pricing from available catalogs, then yes, you can enhance your returns decanning and sending the combs out to a known refiner. Most have a 10,000lb minimum for PGMs, some will do 80 or 85% of assay value down to 2500lbs or so. It depends on who your dealing with. But ask the pertinent questions, note Alloy's assay, (although the presence of gold might mean he had other things in the assay material?) the point is make sure you get a clear answer on what materials they will recover and what they agree to pay by percent OR what the per lb charge is. Its not going to be like PCBs where high weights usually get you below the one dollar a pound refining cost...so you really need an answer to those questions on paper.

Anyways, he missed some major refiners, BASF is out in South Carolina, up until recently they only really did filter cake and industrial catalysts, but they can process combs too. Another option if you would rather the refiner do the decanning and provide you with assays by group (They have done it for us on oil refinery catalysts) GRG West is in north los vegas, they are also owned by a company that does cat buying, so lots of their work is already known value. Same as before though, you need to produce material quantity they are looking for, which is A LOT.

I'm not hear to step on toes or make people mad, there's enough of that to go around already. My goal is to do as much domestically as we can get away with. Foreign exchange of commodities always detracts.

Think on the following statment long enough the light will come on, eh maybe - maybe not.

Originally Posted by alloy2

To the best of my knowledge there are only two smelters on the USA than handle the platinum group metals.

I'm not talking about elemetal. All of us know what kind of service they sell. Same **** they were doing in Texas.