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Comment by codesections | Hacker News Reader

> This honeycomb is sent to an illegal smelter, where the precious metals are extracted, distilled, and sold to manufacturers.

Does anyone know any details about this part of the operation? The article doesn't provide any, and I'm surprised to learn that "illegal smelters" are a thing — I've never thought of smelting as especially subtle

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I don't know exactly how this is done for cats but I've gotten into some backyard metal extraction before. If you have lax safety standards and some ingenuity a lot of precious metal extraction can be done with reasonably inexpensive and small equipment, it's the kind of thing you could set up in a rented garage for probably under $10k in equipment if you're thrifty and clever. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jchem/2019/2318157/ suggests a process, basic technique seems to be to extract the core, crush it, and then chemical separation and precipitation using reasonably easy to get reagents. And given that they talk about it as an eco-friendly method I suspect that isn't the easiest way.

Cody's lab has all kinds of chemistry and smelting videos: https://youtu.be/UHStZrQ3OP4 for getting them from a catalytic converter.

He's also done an attempt at getting the precious metals from the dust on the interstate

I would have expected any smelting/extraction to be on the "legal" side of the fence — usually, articles about cat theft suggest they're sold to unscrupulous but legal scrap dealers, who can mix the stolen converters in with their legitimate stream of parts sawn off of junked cars.

(It also, as a practical matter, seems easier to do that than to convince manufacturers to buy odd batches of rare metals from your illegal smelter.)

Another way to put it is that any smelter knowingly accepting stolen materials is an illegal smelter.

Imagine a shipping container of stolen catalytic converters unloading in China.

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