Carbon Negatives

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Carbon and coke contamination in petroleum and petrochemical platinum group metal (PGM) bearing catalysts sent for reclaim has tripled in the last five years.

It has created an extreme backlog for reclaimers around the world, as they must significantly reduce or eliminate carbon/coke in order to determine the actual PGM contents.

This leaves an untold number of PGM ounces trapped in inventories for weeks on end and leads to many negative implications for clients and markets. In particular, this rising contamination is causing longer delivery times for final precious metals return, higher leasing rates, and lower availability of high purity metal.

You can get more context on this subject from Bradford Cook's Hydrocarbon Engineering interview in September 2021 here.