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The amount of platinum, palladium, and rhodium used in a typical car’s catalytic converter is small: just over one-tenth of a gram in the case of rhodium.
But those metals are so valuable — rhodium can cost up to $17,000 per ounce — that a used catalytic converter from a scrapped car can cost more than $300 worth of platinum-based metals.
The challenge is to separate those valuable metals from metals and fabrics in discarded and shredded catalytic converters, diesel particulate filters, and commercial catalysts used in petrochemical and pharmaceutical plants.
Currently, the most common way to recover these metals is smelting, which is energy-intensive and expensive.
A Colombian-British startup called pH7 Technologies recently gained a lot of attention for a solvent-based process, called solvometallurgy, that evolved as an option for extracting organic platinum metals from commercial and automotive waste.
“We are an option for the foundry,” explained Mohammad Doostmohammadi, founder and CEO of pH7.
The solvometallurgy procedure developed through pH7 uses biological and non-biological chemicals and an electrochemical procedure capable of extracting valuable metals from wastes that generate emissions or wastewater. The procedure is described as a “closed loop” because the chemicals used in the procedure are regenerated and reused.
“It’s more energy-efficient and cheaper,” Doostmohammadi said.
Last year, the company raised $22 million in Series A investments and was one of thirteen Canadian companies to make the Foreign Cleantech One Hundred list earlier this year.
The Center for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) has approved a $1 million investment to expand pH7, an electrolyzer that will be used in the process of extracting copper from mining waste.
“This procedure not only increases copper extraction by up to 50%, but also produces green hydrogen thanks to its patent-pending organoacid electrolyzers,” the CICE noted.
“When the pH7 procedure is followed in Canada, it is possible to add more than 80,000 tonnes to the country’s existing copper capacity and generate more than $1 billion in revenue. “
Originally from Iran, Doostmohammadi, who has a master’s degree in chemical engineering, worked as an engineer for a gold mining company in Iran for several years before moving to Canada to earn an MBA from Simon Fraser University.
Processing and storing ore from mining operations can be water-intensive, and in arid climates, such as Iran and Chile, this can be a real hurdle.
Water use in mining was one of the issues Doostmohammadi sought to address through pH7 Technologies, which he founded in 2020 based on a proprietary closed-loop critical steel mining procedure he developed. The company first focused on platinum composite steels (PGM). ).
“We are adding more metals to our metals portfolio,” Doostmohammadi said. “We with the MGPs. . . Now we’re adding copper, tin, gold and silver. “
The company is building and commissioning a new demonstration plant in Burnaby that will process up to tons of waste per day.
The waste comes from used catalysts and catalytic converters, mainly from the United States. The waste arrives at pH7 already converted into powder, and then pH7 extracts the valuable metals from this waste. Currently, the company employs 40 people.
“We hope that after this factory is up and running and fabrics are processed for our partners, we can build advertising factories on a larger scale than this around the world,” Doostmohammadi said.
One of the current consumers of the pH7 is Mitsubishi Corp. (TYO:8058).
Doostmohammadi believes that one of the markets for the solvometallurgical generation of pH7 is copper.
Between 0. 1% and 1% of the tailings material is copper. Current mining processing strategies make it prohibitive to attempt to extract such small amounts of the metal, which is used in renewable energy technologies, construction, electronics, and elsewhere.
“The market is huge,” Doostmohammadi said. Lately we have been preparing pilot projects to be able to extract these fabrics from old mines and even from mines that are recently in operation.
What makes the pH7 procedure a closed loop is the fact that the chemicals used in the solvometallurgy procedure are regenerated in an electrolyzer designed through pH7. This procedure produces hydrogen as a byproduct.
Doostmohammadi said his company is collaborating with several giant mining corporations interested in building pH7 extraction plants at their mining sites to produce copper and hydrogen.
“With a significant copper shortage on the horizon, culpable optimization of mine production must drive the transition to an empty energy future,” said Sarah Goodman, executive director of CICE.
“PH7’s closed-loop heap leach process, which allows for on-site copper mining and hydrogen production, is a game-changer. We are proud to support pH7’s efforts to source copper globally while generating blank hydrogen directly at the mine site, addressing the demanding infrastructure situations involved in refueling hydrogen in remote locations,” he stated.
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