AUTOCAT RECOVERY REVS UP

摘要

Though environmental regulations and the scrap industry have at times had an uneasy relationship, there's one recycling niche for which tougher government rules have been an absolute boon-the recovery of platinum-group metals (PGMs) from catalytic converters that are put on cars to control emissions. Just look at the recovery figures for platinum, palladium, and rhodium, the three most significant PGMs, says Ellen Zadoff, market research manager, North America, for Johnson Matthey Inc. (Wayne, Pa.), a leading catalyst refiner and manufacturer of catalytic converters. "Platinum recovery has more than doubled [since the early 1990s]," she notes, "palladium has more than tripled, rhodium has increased by about fourfold-and that has to do with the fact that, as time went on, emissions legislation strengthened and therefore required greater amounts of PGMs to control emissions and meet the regulations."