Certification of the mass fractions of Pt, Pd and Rh in a used car catalyst reference material

The high economic value of catalysts containing the platinum group elements platinum, rhodium and palladium as active components causes the need to be able to measure the precious metal loading with small uncertainty and to have suitable certified reference materials fulfilling high demands on the quality of the certified values. In European Reference Material ERM-EB504, a used cordierite-based car catalyst material, mass fractions of platinum, palladium and rhodium were certified. The raw material was milled, homogenised and annealed before analysis. Seventeen laboratories experienced in precious metals analysis participated in the certification interlaboratory comparison, most of them analysing with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry using different sample pretreatment techniques. Homogeneity testing was carried out using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The certified mass fractions of Pt, Pd and Rh and their expanded uncertainties (k = 2) in ERM -EB504 are (1777 ± 15), (279 ± 6) and (338 ± 4) mg/kg respectively. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.