Separation of platinum and palladium from base metals with a weakly basic cellulose ion exchanger

Platinum(IV) and palladium (II) are strongly adsorbed on the weakly basic cellulose ion exchanger DEAE from dilute thiocyanate media, while most other metal ions do not show any marked tendency to adsorb from the same media. It is possible to separate and concentrate the noble metal ions from a large quantity of base metals such as iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc and lead. As little as 1 mg of platinum(IV) and/or palladium (II) can be quantitatively separated from as much as 20–25 g of base metals on a small column of DEAE (thiocyanate form). The noble metal ions adsorbed are easily stripped from DEAE.