I have a damaged cat.
Basically the "honeycomb" split in half, one section rotated, blocked the pipe resulting in a massive power loss, ie it felt like a normally aspirated 1600 cc .
I had to bang the honeycomb out, and now I have a pile of the stuff.

So, what is this stuff, and is it worth anything £.
Or, should it just go in the bin.

The honeycomb is more like a block with needle fine tubes running through.
Exhaust was after market.
I heard there might be some platinum, not sure how much ?

 

Loose ceramic catalytic convertor from a genuine core is currently worth about £20 per kilo.

Aftermarket and metallic is worth almost nothing

 

I think its a matter of grams in there. But you'd be unlikely to get a buyer that way. When you sell the whole units, they tend to give you less, or nothing at all for a damage one, AKA the rattlers.

 

They contrain platinum which creates a chemical reaction doing something to the hydrocarbons lol.. we had a load stolen from work worth £80 a piece!

 

Not worth £80 each any more! - All the scrap has dropped right down recently.

 

this was afew months back lol.. economic downturn = bollocks lol

 

I'll probably bin it, then. Thx.

 

IT will contain Rhodium (reduction catalyst) and Paladium OR Platinum (rarely if ever both) - most use Paladium these days, as well as (sometimes) Nickel.

It is worth money, phone round some local scrap dealers, even if its only £20, that is still £20!

The cat acts in three ways, it stores Oxygen in the coating (over the parent material (known as the substrate) be it ceramic or metallic) and like any catalyst it encourages a chemical reaction without actually taking part in it, Oxides of Nitrogen (known as NOx) are 'reduced' by splitting off the Oxygen, this is then either stored or used immediately (stored used later) for oxidising CO to CO2 and unburnt fuel (Hydrocarbons or HCs for short) into CO2 and H2O.

Paladium is not a nice pollutant, it has 'heavy metal' properties and affects animal bodies in the same way Lead and Mercury do.

Jonson Mathey - one of the worlds biggest suppliers of catalysts - are based in OZ and a lot of the precious metals are mined there.

Simon