Sampling of the untreated material for evaluation purposes • Often, catalyst batches are heterogeneous in quality. This can be due to several factors : • Graded contamination during catalyst cycle • Mixture of various qualities of catalyst • Local problems during operation such as hot spots etc... • Depending on the heterogeneity of the catalyst batch, a customized sampling can be done before the treatment, in order to separate "good" and "bad" material. This sampling can be done either : • Before reactor unloading using the Petroval's PROBACAT system • (The PROBACAT system allows picking up of a sample directly inside the reactor, from the top or lateral manholes) • After reactor unloading by specific sampling procedure discussed with the customer. Example of sampling & analyses procedure to select "good" catalyst. • On a standard basis, the catalysts arriving in the Eurecat Plants are sampled in 2 steps : • A representative sample is taken from each truck arriving in the EURECAT plant Heterogeneity in the catalyst’s quality may be detected at this stage. • A global representative sample of a reactor load is also made up by gathering each truck representative sample.

Sampling of material during off-site treatment During processing spot samples are taken at high frequency to monitor the material quality. More precisely for the regeneration process, a 100 ml sample (or more, depending on the size of the batch to be processed) is taken every two hours for routine analyses. These samples (corresponding to a total volume of about 5 litres) are set aside, mixed together at the end of regeneration, homogenized and a 200 ml representative sample is taken on which are carried out all the final analyses. What is left of the 5 litres is kept for eventual additional analyses or sent to customers upon request.

Representative samples are kept for five years in a specially dedicated storage facility.