Extraction and Isolation of Precious Metals from Diesel Exhaust Components

FSX designs, constructs, and operates machinery used to service diesel exhaust emissions equipment. In particular, FSX cleans diesel particulate filters (DPFs) and diesel oxidation catalysts (DOCs). These drum-shaped filters help to greatly reduce the emission of harmful diesel combustion byproducts such as carbon soot, carbon monoxide (CO), and nitrous oxides (NOx). The filters require occasional servicing (cleaning) in order to give optimum fuel economy, reliability, power output, and filtration efficacy. FSX identifies a great number of failed filters, typically defective due to thermal damage allowing exhaust to pass through unfiltered. DPFs and especially DOCs have a small amount of precious metals attached to the filter substrate to act as a catalyst. FSX wants to identify a reliable method of separating those precious metals from the substrate for assay purposes. The student team worked to perform research and experiments to determine a methodology to separate/extract the precious metals.

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