Precious Metal Recovery from Spent Catalysts

A new process called AquaCat (R) for the recovery of precious metals from spent heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts is described. The process has two stages, the first stage is to determine the precious metal content of a spent heterogeneous catalyst using new direct sampling technology. The second stage involves supercritical water oxidation, during which the carbonaceous material is converted into less noxious compounds, leaving the precious metals as their oxides.