Improved and selective recovery of platinum from a spent dehydrogenation platinum alpha-alumina supported catalyst using a strong basic ion exchange resin is reported. Platinum and other precious metal group (PMG) complexes are leached using concentrated hydrochloric acid along with about 0.20 vol.% nitric acid as an oxidizing agent from de-coked and crushed spent catalyst. Effects of hydrochloric acid concentration, time, and temperature in leaching stage are investigated. The strong basic anionic resin is treated by sodium hydroxide solution to replace chloride anion by hydroxyl group ion. The supernatant of the leaching process is passed through a fixed column of hydroxylated strong base anionic resin. The treated resin on which the platinum complex is adsorbed is dried and burned in an oxidizing atmosphere at 750-800 degrees C. The recovered gray metallic powder is mainly platinum. Results compared with those obtained from untreated anionic resin show that adsorption of platinum complexes onto the treated anionic resin is more selective and the yield of separation is considerably improved. The breakthrough curves of the pretreated anion exchanger and that of untreated exchange resin reveals that the capacity of the hyroxilated resin is decreased by about 14%. These breakthrough curves can be used for calculation of height of a practical exchange plate (HPEP) for design purposes. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.