Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.51, No.50, 16457-16466, 2012
In Situ Platinum Recovery and Color Removal from Organosilicon Streams
Resource limitations, increased demand, and the high cost of precious metals (e.g., platinum) have led to the focus on recovery of platinum from organosilicon hydrosilylation streams as a potentially important source of cost savings in the organosilicon industry. In this work, in situ fixed-bed adsorption technology is demonstrated to be an effective platinum recovery and product color removal process. With the in situ Pt recovery process and using a functionalized silica gel scavenging material, a Pt recovery greater than 90% can be obtained both from silane distillation heavy wastes (with initial Pt concentration of around 50 ppm) and from organosilicon products (with initial Pt concentration of around 5 ppm), with suitable temperature and residence time. Long-term bed volume (By) experiments were also carried out, and very high BV operations of the corresponding streams could be achieved, still with reasonably high Pt recovery at the end of the long-term run, and a Pt loading of about 2% could be obtained on scavengers. In addition, after Pt removal, the organosilicon products showed much reduced color, which is preferable for industrial applications.