Towards Sustainable Bioleaching of Platinum Group Metals from Spent Automotive Catalysts

Abstract

Spent automotive catalysts represent an important secondary resource for platinum group metals, offering environmental and economic advantages over primary mining. This review evaluates bioleaching-based recovery strategies of these metals as sustainable alternatives to conventional pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processing. The cyanogenic bioleaching using Chromobacterium violaceum, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Bacillus megaterium, and acidophilic bioleaching using Acidithiobacillus spp. for washcoat degradation and base-metal removal are discussed through the one-step, two-step, spent-medium, and decoupled systems. The analysis shows progressive improvement of recovery as process separation increases. Sequential pretreatment involving ultrasound-assisted acid leaching, thermal oxidation, and pressure-enhanced processing improved recovery by removing competing base metals and increasing PGM accessibility. Kinetic analyses indicate that diffusion through the porous catalyst support matrix becomes the dominant rate-controlling mechanism at high conversion, which impacts reactor design. Despite sustainability potential, industrial implementation remains constrained by low pulp density, cyanide stability, reactor productivity, and scale-up limitations. Routes to commercialisation require feasibility studies of process designs that integrate viable process flow diagrams combining pretreatment, biological lixiviant generation, intensified bioleaching, and downstream metal purification.