Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Buy PdCl2 from Alibaba; Recover Pd; Profit?

Buy PdCl2 from Alibaba; Recover Pd; Profit?

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 07:24

Greetings all! I'm an EE but I like to do a bit of electroplating and anodizing and such in the ol' workshop.

Whilst stumbling around Alibaba on the hunt for cheap precious metal salts I saw a bunch of listings for PdCl2 at what can't possibly be correct prices - like $100US / kg. Before I get too excited about the prospect of becoming an instant thousandaire (like a millionaire, except 10^-3 smaller), I want to investigate the feasibility of the process, specifically:

1. Has anyone successfully purchased chemicals from Alibaba and actually got what was claimed - I'd hate to order a kg of PdCl2 only to get some vaguely reddish-brown dirt instead.

2. What would be the best way to recover the palladium from the salt? I was thinking that simply plating it onto a sheet of Pd foil would be the most direct approach, but that may be the result of technological myopia (that is, I am familiar with plating so that would be the obvious route to me). Perhaps some kind of chemical reduction would be more appropriate, though, as it wouldn't require purchasing a very expensive sheet of Pd foil.

wg48 - 4-1-2018 at 08:32

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

Greetings

Whilst stumbling around Alibaba on the hunt for cheap precious metal salts I saw a bunch of listings for PdCl2 at what can't possibly be correct prices - like $100US / kg.

Yes your correct, that is not correct price. They just put a generic price in the ad. You have to contact them for actual price.

Bert - 4-1-2018 at 08:35

Yup. Stuff that costs $1,000 kg+++ is routinely listed as "$1 to $100", you need to ask for a real quote.

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 08:58

I suspected as much, but even at $10000 / kg this would still be a worthwhile endeavor; there's about 50% Pd by weight in PdCl2, right?

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 11:45

Hmmm, so I did a bit of googling on how to recover Pd from PdCl2 and some of the results were a bit alarming as it seems PdCl2 is used to make drugs.

Still, I did come across some interesting papers on the treatment of wastewater from refining/recycling and one process sounds particularly interesting: cementation. Apparently you just stir some zinc or aluminum powder into a solution of PdCl2 in water and the Cl2 will attach to the Zn or Al, leaving the Pd to precipitate out! It sounds so simple I have to wonder what I'm missing; much like with the pricing of said Pd salt on Alibaba.

aga - 4-1-2018 at 12:08

In theory, at $10,000 per kg, you could end up with a max of 600g of Pd out of 1kg which is worth, in theory $21,276, so your basic idea is right.

From https://www.apmex.com/spotprices/palladium-price :-

"Palladium Price Per Gram $35.46"

Now, that price is for someone established in the Palladium market with assayed product and involved buyers.

If you end up with a lump of Pd in your hands, who are you gonna sell it to ?

Even if you manage to find someone, they WILL reduce the price massively as they do not know you, trust your assay statement or legal status.

Same goes for gold, platinum, stolen diamonds, ancient artifacts, nazi art treasures etc.

Next is the cost of extracting the Pd from the PdCl₂, the process efficiency and the Time required.
Also the cost of disposing of the waste products.

All these tiny problems kick the bottom out of most PM recovery get-rich schemes.

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 14:06

Yes, the proverbial devil is always in the details, but selling the "scrap" palladium isn't that difficult, nor do you get penalized in price per gram (or troy ounce, as it were) as much as when you sell, say, scrap aluminum or copper. See this website for up to date prices on scrap palladium of various grades and quantities: http://directgold.metallix.com/palladium/

Of course, if the PdCl2 costs more than around $20US/g then recovering the Pd from it is unlikely to end happily, but metal prices change all the time and what is unprofitable today might be profitable tomorrow.

Now, about possible methods to get the Pd out of the PdCl2... the most promising two I've found are ion exchange in which aluminum or zinc trade places with palladium, but there can be a problem with the resulting Pd taking up lots of hydrogen when excess Zn or Al is destroyed with acid. The other chemical method which I found the barest mention of in another post on here is to boil in the PdCl2 in sodium formate buffered to a pH of 5. That sounds fairly easy (famous last words, I know).

Electrowinning - basically, refining through electrolysis - is still on the table, and could be the best method overall, but would also take the longest and requires a minimum level of PdCl2 in solution to work; perhaps too much, unless this is done semi-continuously.

kadriver - 4-1-2018 at 15:13

Elemetal Direct will buy your palladium. They pay 80% of spot based on purity of your metal. So if you had 995 pure palladium then the would pay .995 X .8 X spot = payout.

kadriver - 4-1-2018 at 15:17

Palladium is the easiest of the six sister metals in the platinum group to refine. Partly because it is the only one of the six to dissolve in hot dilute nitric acid.

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 15:23

Quote: Originally posted by kadriver

Elemetal Direct will buy your palladium. They pay 80% of spot based on purity of your metal. So if you had 995 pure palladium then the would pay .995 X .8 X spot = payout.

Wow, thanks for that tip - Elemetal Direct is located just a few miles from me!

Now I just need to decipher the Chinglish responses from my Alibaba inquiries; assuming any of them respond to my request for pricing on 1kg.

EDIT - and figure out how best to convert PdCl2 back to Pd... ahem...

[Edited on 4-1-2018 by DaftStrategery]

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 15:41

Quote: Originally posted by kadriver

Palladium is the easiest of the six sister metals in the platinum group to refine. Partly because it is the only one of the six to dissolve in hot dilute nitric acid.

Hmmm, isn't nitric acid virtually impossible to purchase because of DHS restrictions? Also, while I feel I am very competent technically, I am less confident in my ability to safely use nitric acid or cyanide solutions, to name 2 that are commonly used to recover PGMs.

Bert - 4-1-2018 at 15:49

Additionally, if you end up with a kilo of something that is NOT (a platinum group metal) chloride, how are you going to pursue whoever in China burned you?

We deal with China a good bit. If you don't go there and meet the people, see the specific product you want, hash out a deal the Chinese are happy with and then have someone knowledgable who YOU pay watch the loading to ensure that is what will be shipped , things happen.

(Edit)
Additionally, as we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars which could bankrupt us to lose, we structure our payments. A certain % down at time of agreement & our order being accepted. Another % on completion of order and our agent in China signing off on quality, quantity and general conformation to spec., before trucking to port at loading of container(s) from factory warehouse. Another % when FOB (order is on a ship and will be leaving China, short of a ship wreck, nuclear war, etc.). And the last increment, usually at least 10% on our receipt and TESTING the product ourselves, just in case they fucked the dog in some way regardless.

On top of that, we buy insurance for shipments on the water, because ships DO sink, get hijacked by hungry Somalis, blow up, throw all the category 1 containers overboard when there is a fire onboard & etc.

[Edited on 5-1-2018 by Bert]

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 16:03

Quote: Originally posted by Bert

Additionally, if you end up with a kilo of something that is NOT (a platinum group metal) chloride, how are you going to pursue whoever in China burned you?

We deal with China a good bit. If you don't go there and meet the people, see the specific product you want, hash out a deal the Chinese are happy with and then have someone knowledgable who YOU pay watch the loading to ensure that is what will be shipped , things happen.

Yes, as an EE that's designed many products, key parts of which pretty much had to be assembled in China, I am well aware of the, shall we say, cultural differences at work here. I highly recommend a book titled "Poorly Made in China" for a good explanation of these differences.

Or maybe you are suggesting starting out with a much smaller order, say 10g or 100g?

Bert - 4-1-2018 at 16:17

If they won't send you a sample at quoted rate + shipping, fuck 'em.

DaftStrategery - 4-1-2018 at 16:25

Quote: Originally posted by Bert

If they won't send you a sample at quoted rate + shipping, fuck 'em.

Yeah, that is SOP when dealing with China. And you are dead-on about them only caring as much about what they send you as you care about it yourself. So if you go in asking for the cheapest price and don't bother to check up on them (or even monitor them the entire time) then you get a sack of reddish-brown dirt instead of PdCl2.

Bert - 4-1-2018 at 16:40

They will say it to your face: "Quality control is the BUYERS responsibility".

Reboot - 4-1-2018 at 16:41

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

and some of the results were a bit alarming as it seems PdCl2 is used to make drugs.

I wouldn't worry about it. It's not a Listed or otherwise regulated chemical in the US. The metal plating, jewelry, and photo folks buy most of it I think.

DaftStrategery - 5-1-2018 at 09:27

Quote: Originally posted by Reboot

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

and some of the results were a bit alarming as it seems PdCl2 is used to make drugs.

I wouldn't worry about it. It's not a Listed or otherwise regulated chemical in the US. The metal plating, jewelry, and photo folks buy most of it I think.

That's one showstopper out of the way, then. Even if you aren't up to no good, you still don't want the feds kicking in your door and shooting your dog.

Now back to the main question... most of the really interesting papers I am finding on the recovery of Pd from PdCl2 are behind paywalls, but reading the abstracts I have zeroed in on two frontrunners:

Electrowinning

and

Pd Recovery using Sodium Formate

Surely there must be a reasonable way of converting PdCl2 back to Pd - I mean, isn't aqua regia used to extract the PGMs from catalytic converters, and aren't the PGMs then in the form of chloride (or is it nitrate?) salts?

SWIM - 5-1-2018 at 10:40

I don't see why you're worried about making palladium out of it.

PdCl2 is fetching $40 US per gram on Ebay right now.

Just buy a bunch of little bottles and a scale.

$34 profit per gram is probably less work for the money than refining palladium in the lab would be, unless you're going to work on a large scale.

DaftStrategery - 5-1-2018 at 10:55

Quote: Originally posted by SWIM

I don't see why you're worried about making palladium out of it.

PdCl2 is fetching $40 US per gram on Ebay right now.

Bah, that's no fun... also, now that I know it has some nefarious uses I'd rather not be fingered as a supplier when some snot-nosed brat gets taken down by the DEA.

But no, I'm not planning on doing this on an industrial scale, or as anything more than a sheer challenge with the possibility of a bit more of a payoff in the end than, say, climbing a mountain.

This is sciencemadness.org, correct? Not sciencesoberandrationalandnofun.org... or has my browser been compromised with a stealth page redirector?

Cryolite. - 5-1-2018 at 13:35

I mean, PdCl2 has plenty of legitimate uses too (precursor to Pd/C, palladium complexes, etc). I've bought gram quantities of palladium in the past specifically to convert to palladium carbon. Sure, it can be used for Wacker oxidation of safrole to methylenedioxyphenylacetone, but 1) safrole is now basically impossible to get unless you own a sassafras farm, 2) formic acid + hydrogen peroxide is known to do that transformation too, and 3) converting palladium to palladium chloride is easy enough. It's somewhat unfair to write away the whole chemical as evil in this light.

SWIM - 5-1-2018 at 15:13

Here's a thought: If you buy this PdCl2 for next to nothing and make palladium out of it you could sell it back to the manufacturer at 1/2 the spot price. (you'd make money, and they'd be getting palladium cheaper than they could anywhere else)

Then they could make more PdCl2 out of it and be back where they started except you'd have some of their cash.

So why not explain this to them and ask them to just send you the cash and save everybody the effort?

Big savings on postage and reagents too.

aga - 5-1-2018 at 15:15

Excellent thinking there SWIM.

Totally unworkable, but still excellent.

Alternatively, work for a living, or gamble.

DaftStrategery - 5-1-2018 at 15:25

Quote: Originally posted by SWIM

Here's a thought: If you buy this PdCl2 for next to nothing and make palladium out of it you could sell it back to the manufacturer at 1/2 the spot price. (you'd make money, and they'd be getting palladium cheaper than they could anywhere else).

Sigh...

No one wants to talk about the chemistry, just the business prospects.

The premise sounds absurd when you put it that way, and it is if you were to try to sell the Pd back to a company in China, but that's not the idea; Pd is worth way more here than it is China, for many of the same reasons why building an iPhone here would double or triple its price, or why you could rent a mansion in Topeka, Kansas for what a modest apartment goes for in NYC or San Francisco.

Now, if the Chinese have to buy Pd from the London Metals Exchange at the current spot price then this idea is totally impractical, but if they are digging it out of the ground along with all the other valuable heavy metals they practically have a monopoly on now then their cost may very well be a fraction of ours, even on the scrap market.

But all of this is theoretically irrelevant on a forum supposedly dedicated to amateur chemistry/science. Quit trying to save me from bad economic decisions and instead help me avoid bad chemistry decisions!

RogueRose - 6-1-2018 at 05:46

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

Quote: Originally posted by Reboot

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

and some of the results were a bit alarming as it seems PdCl2 is used to make drugs.

I wouldn't worry about it. It's not a Listed or otherwise regulated chemical in the US. The metal plating, jewelry, and photo folks buy most of it I think.

Attachment: Electrowinning of palladium using a modified cyclone reactor kim2002.pdf (209kB)
This file has been downloaded 418 times

Attachment: The use of sodium formate for the recovery of precious metals from acidic base metal effluents julsing2001.pdf (112kB)
This file has been downloaded 391 times

DaftStrategery - 6-1-2018 at 07:43

Thank you, RogueRose! I've downloaded the two papers and given them a cursory glance because I've been reading this delightful text from the 1940s on the recovery of precious metals by Hoke... Some real gems in that one, like "taste the washings until they are no longer sour"!?!

One additional note, since some of you appear to not be taking my posts here in the spirit intended. I thought the choice of thread title and my somewhat irreverent tone would suffice to show that I am not approaching this as a serious business venture or even as some kind of "get rich quick" scheme. I'm just a curious fellow who has an interest in electroplating and saw a potentially interesting tangent in recovering Pd from PdCl2, admittedly because the advertised price on Alibaba seemed absurdly low, but once I put more than a few minutes of effort into researching just how one might go about doing this it started to sound like a fun project. As long as fuming nitric acid or cyanide isn't involved, that is. Or visits from the DEA/ATF/FBI/FDA/etc.

[Edited on 6-1-2018 by DaftStrategery]

Fleaker - 13-1-2018 at 19:06

Could just use the search engine--this has been covered before here (by myself).

In any case, you will not get a discount on palladium buying it as its dichloride from most supplier. I make the stuff and it goes for a couple buck per gram premium in bulk as a fabricated good. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Very rarely there's a discount on sponge or on bar stock. A few years back, there was about a $22/oz spread on taking 50 troy ounce Pd bars and dissolving them all and making them into palladium sponge. Worth while.

I suggest instead you buy scrap dental gold and separate the Pd, Pt, and Ag and Au just like garage chemist has. You will find that to be both educational and profitable.

NEMO-Chemistry - 14-1-2018 at 02:41

I think China is getting better, depending on what your spending it may be worth getting a agent.

As for drug making, most people use drug related chemicals all the time. Personally i use one a great deal, what worries me is soon it may be listed. Not sure what I will do if it does get listed, bloody drug cooks using water is going to screw us all up!

Melgar - 14-1-2018 at 12:04

Quote: Originally posted by kadriver

Elemetal Direct will buy your palladium. They pay 80% of spot based on purity of your metal. So if you had 995 pure palladium then the would pay .995 X .8 X spot = payout.

I bet if you convert it to PdCl2 and sell it on eBay, that's where you'd get top dollar. They'll pay as much per gram of PdCl2 as they will for Pd metal! And PdCl2 is only like 60% Pd. Some of them are also interested in sassafras products, but not all of them are. It probably shouldn't matter.

Quote: Originally posted by DaftStrategery

I can go into a local store and buy a gallon of nitric acid for $60, in the middle of Manhattan. I can buy sodium and potassium cyanide by the pound too. Incidentally, is there an easy way to extract PdCl2 and Pd dust from an old carpet by using a CN salt? Nitric acid would oxidize the whole bucket, I'm afraid.

Those things are legal to sell, just very difficult and expensive to ship.

DaftStrategery - 15-1-2018 at 06:31

Quote:

I'm glad to see there is still some interest in this topic, even though the lot of you can't seem to resist lecturing me on the economics, while being suspiciously circumspect about the chemistry. Case in point:

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

Could just use the search engine--this has been covered before here (by myself).

Yes, I did find your post via google search - http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=71811 - and it was actually what led me to start a topic on the subject here, because I wouldn't exactly describe your post as having covered this subject. For example...

Hydrogen will rapidly reduce it? My understanding - knowing all too well this isn't saying much - is that you need to heat the salt up to "calcination temperature" then pass hydrogen gas over it to reduce it back to the metal; that doesn't sound practical for the garage chemist, and it would produce gaseous HCl as a bonus.

I am also aware of using a more active metal such as Zn or Fe and HCl to precipitate out the Pd, but I am concerned this could result in contamination of the Pd if too much of the active metal is added; and isn't finely divided Pd - which is what you will get from this approach - itself soluble in HCl?

Your other brief suggestion was to use boiling sodium formate solution at pH 5, but the limited information I found about this approach is that it is a very vigorous reaction and requires careful control of the pH. Furthermore, I'm not sure of the most practical way to adjust the pH: start with sodium formate solution (likely highly basic as it is a salt of a weak acid and strong base) and add formic acid or start with formic acid and add sodium hydroxide?

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

In any case, you will not get a discount on palladium buying it as its dichloride from most supplier. I make the stuff and it goes for a couple buck per gram premium in bulk as a fabricated good. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It's probably a moot point now anyway, since I have not been able to register my business on Alibaba - it asked me an email address when I initially registered, I confirmed the email address, then it asked me to enter my password, but I never specified a password in the first place, and doing the "I forgot my password" resulted in an error page. Rather annoying, all of this.

Quote: Originally posted by Fleaker

I suggest instead you buy scrap dental gold and separate the Pd, Pt, and Ag and Au just like garage chemist has. You will find that to be both educational and profitable.

AFAIK, this requires nitric acid or cyanide solutions; I'm not really interested in dying over some dental fillings.

Fleaker - 24-1-2018 at 11:32

I'm not trying to lecture you on the economics, but rather guide you to the reality that people generally don't sell manufactured precious metals goods at a discount. I know this because I happen to work in the precious metals field.
But to answer your original first question...you can in fact make money buying palladium salts from China. A very well known member here did just that, but he did so having cashed out at the right time.

Maybe I should not bother as it seems you know so much and don't want lectured but your understanding of a lot of things is mistaken.

Your cited post was not the post I was referring to--this was the post I was referring to:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=9721#p...

and this post (from garage_chemist):

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t...

and no, the formate reaction isn't all that vigorous, but I guess that's subjective. Let's put it this way: I have no objection to using formic acid, ammonia, and (NH3)2PdCl2 at 10-30 kg scale but I am also set up to do so and do it routinely. In any case, it's only going to go as fast and as vigorous as you let it, as you're adding the reagents to the reaction mixture.

as for Zn reduction (definitely use Zn if pure Pd precursor was used, copper only if dirty)...that's easily removed with dilute HCl. A small amount of a sulfite salt, or some other O2 scavenging salt, is useful for preventing even miniscule traces of Pd from going into solution. Not that it matters much, because the zinc can be removed from the Pd by melting (it volatilizes away), by dilute acids, etc. You should try and get the Pd as close to pure as possible/ruin it as little as you may, because regardless of what purity you buy, you will not be selling it for spot price because no one is going to accept your Pd metal for delivery.

When I said hydrogen rapidly reduces Pd salts, I mean it does so at room temperature (and on), PdCl2 will be reduced by both CO and H2. Sure, in your case HCl is a byproduct. So you buy a glass tube put it in a pyrex tube and scrub the off gas with dilute sodium hydroxide. Problem solved.
You can also just heat and decompose to PdO from PdCl2 and then melt that directly with an O2/H2 torch.

Nitric acid (or cyanide) are both safe when handled responsibly with suitable precautions taken. I have never come close to dying from either of them and have used both extensively in the past decade. If you are concerned about their health and safety implications, then perhaps stick to EE.

As for Kadriver's suggestion about Elemetal direct...I wouldn't sell them a brass ring, having dealt with the other end of the spectrum on buying from them.

Hope this is less suspiciously circumspect about the chemistry--whatever the hell that means. I just try to avoid the ad nauseum spoon feeding.

Melgar - 24-1-2018 at 17:28

If you want to sell precious metals, eBay is the way to go. You can usually even sell for over spot price. Usually some processed form of the metal, like a salt, will sell for more, but there might not be as much demand.