[Jewelry making - Article 00862] - Re: [Orchid] Refining 950Palladium

[James Binnion]

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>     Has anyone researched refining scrap palladium? Will it be
>     economically viable to refine the metal? 

    What do you mean economically viable? I sure as hell don't let the 
    refiner just keep the palladium that they recover from my scrap 
    without paying me for it :-) But I don't get as good a return on it 
    as I do on gold. On gold you can get around  a 3% refining charge on 
    platinum or any of the platinum group metals it is between 15% and 
    30% depending on your volume and your relationship with your refiner.
    The reason for this is that the typical refiners don't refine the 
    PGM's to their pure state. They collect them and when they have 
    enough (several kilos !) they send it out to one of the Platinum
    refiners like Johnson Mathey or Englehard to separate them into their
    pure states. This is due to the expensive and dangerous processes 
    required to refine the PGM's to pure metal. So you pay for them to 
    hold onto your platinum, palladium, iridium, ruthenium etc till they 
    have a couple of kilos to send out to refine. 

Jim

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