Plaurum smelting technology targets specialty metals

The Russia-based Plaurum Group says it is boosting specialty metals recycling levels in that nation with its Ekaterinburg Non-Ferrous Metals Processing Plant (EZOCM) facility.

In a report summarizing its efforts in 2017, Plaurum Group says operations at the facility have focused on sampling catalysts and other types of industrial scrap “with a low content of precious metals.” The technology consists of two units for sampling and a plasma smelting furnace, which was commissioned in July 2016.

During the year-long span the recovery line has operated, it has processed about 200 tons of material, “mainly spent industrial catalysts of petrochemical plants, containing platinum and rhenium.” The firm says that during the next two years it expects that volume is to be “considerably increased.”

“The first six months after the commissioning was a transition period from trial operation of the plasma furnace to industrial production,” says Vladimir Bogdanov, general director of Recycling MPG Ltd., a subsidiary of EZOCM that is operating the facility.

“The main workload on the equipment occurred in 2017, as these 200 tons were actually processed during the first five months of the year,” continues Bogdanov. “Now the furnace is working cyclically, three days a week. This operating schedule is manned by two shifts of smelting furnace operators. Until the end of the year, we are also planning on processing [another] 200 tons of material.”

The plasma smelting plant has the capacity to handle up to 1,000 tons of material annually, and EZOCM says it is planning to reach that level by the end of 2019.

“There are a number of other metallurgical enterprises that started to operate in this market before us and that also own technologies for processing [similar] material,” says Bogdanov. “However, our competitive advantage is a fundamentally new processing technology that differs [with] a shorter cycle and much higher percentage of precious metal recovery,” he states.

According to Denis Borovkov, general director of EZOCM, the key task in the next two years is to obtain new quantities of spent catalysts and to diversify sources of material. “Our production facility can concentrate and process any technogenic material, starting from the tailings of mining enterprises and metallurgical facilities and ending with preowned electronic microcircuits,” he comments.

Borovkov also says, “July 2017 saw the opening of an engineering center at the enterprise with a unique laboratory equipped with all the required process techniques and methods. Now we need to constantly expand access to such material [to accept] it for recycling.”

The commissioning of the plasma smelting process in 2016 was the final milestone of a four-year strategic project for EZOCM and its subsidiaries, EZOCM-Engineering LLC and MPG-Recycling Ltd., says the Plaurum Group.