Recycling Potential of Platinum Group Metals in Japan

The production of the platinum group metals (PGM) consumes large quantities of energy and induces a lot of carbon dioxide. The promotion of PGM recycling is important to construct a sound material-cycle society. In this article, a dynamic material flow analysis for PGM in Japan was conducted in order to evaluate the recycling potential of PGM. In Japan, PGM demand for autocatalyst accounted for about 50% of the total PGM demand in 2008. Therefore, this study focused on platinum, palladium, and rhodium used as autocatalyst. The amount of material stock regarding these autocatalysts were estimated during 1975-2008. The amount of these autocatalysts generated from end-of-life vehicles (ELV) were also estimated during 1988-2008. As the result, the material stock of these metals as autocatalysts has monotonically increased during the investigated period. The amount of these autocatalysts generated from ELV has also increased, but the amount of recycled ones have been rather stable due to growing exportation of used automobiles, used auto engines, and used autocatalysts.