Scrap catalytic converter buyers in the USA

Catalytic converter buyers in the USA

The catalytic converter is a part of the exhausting engine system of your car.

The use of it is that to prevent natural environment pollution. Pretty much every passenger vehicle on the road today will have one somewhere in their exhaust system. It can be one or two or multiple smaller once. They are basically all a cylinder made out of some pretty thick steel with some good welds and sometimes a heat shield. Cat converters have come in use in the 1970s in the USA. In order to fight air pollution, cat converters became a pretty common and important part of exhaust systems of cars and have since remained on any new car rolling off an assembly line. Simply put, these catalytic converters helped by cutting out many nasty and dangerous compounds that are released into the air that come from a running combustion engine.

There are many private and governmental companies, factories, and scrapyards that are interested in recycling in the USA. Сat converter buyers are looking for that spare part because of its value even after use. So let us break down what is this value and how to get it by selling used cat converters.

Valuable core

The sizes of catalytic converters are variable, so how do we determine the value?

What we are looking for is a honeycomb material inside. That is what makes it valuable because it is loaded with platinum and platinum group metals like palladium and rhodium. Those elements when heated by the exhaust catalyze the oxidation and reduction reactions, changing nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and oxygen and carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. Exhausting gas makes less environmental pollution than one without a catalytic converter.

Scrap catalytic converter buyers

As being said, there are precious metals contained inside. Platinum group metals are worth money. Those are rhodium, palladium, and platinum itself. Let us look at these metals individually. Palladium is mainly used in catalytic converters, besides that in some electrical applications, and also in jewelry. Then we have platinum, which has many uses, but it is also primarily used in cat converters, it is also used in jewelry, investments, and other industrial applications as well. The final precious metal is rhodium and is just primarily used for catalytic converters.

Here is something important to note that the United States only mines a very small percentage of the world supply of these three elements compared to let us say Russia and Africa for instance, they mostly supply a world supply of platinum, palladium, and rhodium. That occurs a price difference in different areas depending on how good supply networks work here and there. The reason why are cat converters recycled in the United States is that those precious metals are scarce and expensive. That way it makes sense to reclaim them, so per ounce those precious metals are worth a lot. The issue is that all cats are different, and some of them have fewer goods inside than others. Aftermarket caps are much less valuable for this reason, same as some smaller domestic cars. The contents of the pre-cat directly of the exhaust will be different from one further down the line, so their values would be quite different as well. It is going to come down to the mass and the yield of the honeycomb inside it, and that is why scrapyards have databases. They can check before offering you a price. We can visit the most honest and fair scrapyard in the whole country, but to be realistic, they are in business to make money. The less they can buy your cats for, the more profit they make. That way, it is better to believe they will offer the lowest amount that they can get away with. That is true with every scrap metal, but the massive spread of values on these particular items obscures the truth and that only works in their favor. They could offer 25 dollars for a cat that is worth hundreds of dollars, and you will never know the difference. That is why it would be nice to be able to check that very same database before going into a bargain completely blind. The database is available for cellphones as an app. Most of them charge money, but there would be an amount of free searches, and then you will find if it is worth the payment. For instance, the Eco Cat app is a good option to do market research. That way, you may find online catalytic converter buyers. For that matter, you need to see the numbers on your cat and then put those numbers inside the app. But sometimes there would be no number or scratched number that you are unable to see. But in any case, the best price that you can get would be usually half of the actual pricing because there is a whole scrap catalytic converter recycling process that stands behind that.

Recycling catalytic converter in USA

How does the cycle work? We sell the cat to a scrapyard, and they sell it to a catalytic amalgamator, and then it goes to a refinery who will bear the cost of extracting the material inside to reclaim the final value.

And none of these entities along the way are working for free. Shopping around and choosing the right cat converter buyers when it comes to cats is especially important because you want to get as close to selling directly to the refinery as possible, the app is might be done by those who do the refinery, but still worth a shot. The problem is that there would be a lot of buyers using the app, but their loyalty towards you will depend on how many goods you can sell them. And if there would be one or two cats per month, there would probably not be the best price for that.

Sell used catalytic converter  precautionary methods

Before selling auto parts, especially the core of your used cat converter you need to obey all laws when it comes to exhaust emissions. Do not operate your vehicle without the catalytic converters that have come with that vehicle. Also, do not try to cut open or break your catalytic converter internals to get to their core materials. These are very hazardous materials and can have very negative impacts on your health if you come into contact or inhale them. It is best to always let professionals process your scrap catalytic converter for you.

So let us assume that the cat converter is already off the vehicle. We are going to have a few things ready before going any further. There would be three main things:

1. What type of vehicle does your cat come from

2. ID numbers on cat converter

3. Having a quality photo to share

Looking for used catalytic converter buyers

Now that we have those three things listed above gathered together, we are going to find out who your potential buyers are. So, there are three options to explore once you have kind of obtained the three things we have just mentioned. Those three options are depending on how much money that you are looking to earn back and how much effort would you like to put into it.

1. The 1st option is to sell your cat converter online to a pretty specific cat converter reclaimer.

What you need to do is to take your cat pictures and mail them to your cat converters’ recycling facility. Normally, you pay for a shipping expense in that case. The only downside is that you want to make sure who are you dealing with because you are shipping a fair

amount of money to them, so the reputation of the companies should stay in check.

2. The second option is to try and find a go-between broker. Usually, you can find these people on Facebook making a public post on car pages. The downside of this method is that since your efforts of selling go down, the profit you make of it goes down the same way. It depends on the middleman’s appetites, basically.

3. The third option is to sell a used catalytic converter to a local scrapyard. This would be the most profitable option since you bypass any middleman, but it also will take more effort to reach out to the company directly.

As you can see all of these options are viable, some of them are just less profitable than others, the trade-off would be your effort.