Recovery of Platinum and Rejuvenation of Alumina From Spent Reforming Catalyst, pt/γ-Al2O3

Recovery of platinum from spent naphtha reforming catalyst (Pt/γ-Al2O3) which contain 0.30 wt % of Pt was conducted using two methods, the first one was treatment of the spent catalyst with aqua regia whereas the second one involved chlorination of the spent catalyst. The results show that the chlorination method is more efficient than the acid treatment one as 93 % platinum can be recovered, in addition to reserving the γ-Al2O3 skeletal structure from serous changes. The recovered platinum was converted to hexachlorplatinic acid, a material that can be used to prepare the catalyst again by impregnation method using either new alumina or certain proportion of it and recovered one