Other favourable features of steel catalytic converter include: resistance to thermal shocks (e.g. while driving with a hot car through paddle) and mechanical resistance – when hit, metal catalytic converter will be deformed whereas the ceramic one may be crashed, which in turn may lead to deteriorated engine operation (higher flow resistance), as well as appearance of annoying knocking.
Steel catalyst
Universal steel catalytic converter (equivalent) may be even several times cheaper than the ceramic one. Recycling of metal catalytic converters is much more difficult than of analogues from ceramic insert. Specialist machines of huge capacity are required to separate the ceramic coating with precious metals from steel film. It is a complicated, energy consuming process which required a great amount of experience. Also cost assessment of steel catalytic converters is not an easy activity. Due to a very small amount of ceramic monolith on the film surface it must have a significantly higher concentration of precious metals from the catalytic converter with ceramic core. Increased concentration of metals leads to huge measurement deviations of even 1000% for spectrometers with originally installed „software to test catalytic converters” since they are not adjusted to such high concentrations, and as a result they may cause improper cost assessment of metal catalytic converters.
Recycling of metal catalytic converters
Our company uses a specialist machine to recycling of metal catalytic converters and has spectrometers with necessary calibrations to test them. These calibrations are based on many years of research of these catalytic converters and they are an effect of many years of work, many performed analyses and cooperation with world-leading institutions dealing with precious metal testing and recycling.