How to Close the Loop of Platinum from Heavy Vehicles Catalytic Converters?

Summary The issue of recovering platinum from catalytic converter of heavy vehicles, arises for economic (high valuable component due to the non-negligible presence of platinum that costs around 30 €/g), environmental (low platinum concentration in mines (below 10 g/t) requires large consumption of energy), social (ore mining conditions are increasingly drastic) and geostrategic (more than 90% of platinum stock is located in South Africa and Russia) reasons. Even if some marginal channels exist, the collection rate of platinum from catalytic converters in Europe is still low (around 50%) while recycling efficiency is high (around 95%). As heavy vehicles are not considered by any end-of-life directive contrary to the automotive sector submitted to ELV directive, the objective of this applied research work is to evaluate the impact of other actions levers to close the loop of heavy vehicles catalytic converters which contain larger amount of platinum than in cars. To date, a number of issues that still need to be tackling to close the loop of platinum have been outlined in literature but there is a lack of operational improvement proposal or simulation to see “what if” scenarios, and therefore evaluate the impact of different changes. Indeed, even though research the on end-of-life management has an extensive literature, there is still lack of in-depth investigation on how to effectively improve the overall end-of-life collection, recovery and efficiency related to platinum from heavy-duty vehicles catalytic converters. Thus, new insights are needed to address and overcome the barriers, systematically analysed in previous state-of-the-art, to an effective circular economy of platinum. In this light, the main objectives of this work are twofold, (i) to construct a methodology that aims at assessing the impact of different actions levers on the road toward the circular economy, (ii) to experience the proposed approach through a significant industrial case study from a manufacturer willing to know how close the loop of their product containing precious raw materials, in order to benefit from economic and environmental spinoffs. Through MFA and SD modeling and simulations, promising actions levers (e.g. re-design to facilitate end-of-life recovery, take-back and remanufacturing offers, product-as-a-service, mandatory recycling rate) will be analyzed. Also, methods of prospective will be used to define relevant and realistic scenarios. The developed approach will assess the contribution of different actions levers in “closing-the-loop” by simultaneously considering environmental and economic parameters. In this paper, we will try to summarize the issues of platinum recovery from end-of-life heavy vehicles, to explain in detail the approach and to present first results of application. The proposed method consists in five steps. First step is about modeling the current situation (defining scope, boundaries of the study, identifying stakeholders, representing value chain). Second step deals with the identification and selection of promising and possible action levers. Third step with scenarios elaborations. Fourth step with simulations realisation. Last step with results analysis and presentation to get feedback from actors. The broader impact of this work will be to provide significant new insights for industrial practitioners about mechanisms to maintain platinum deposit contained in catalytic converter in Europe and therefore to secure supply chain. As such, it will represent a valuable contribution to resource sustainability for European platinum sector in the light of the circular economy.