Yanzhi Sun

A green lead hydrometallurgical process based on a hydrogen-lead oxide fuel cell

The automobile industry consumed 9 million metric tons of lead in 2012 for lead-acid batteries. Recycling lead from spent lead-acid batteries is not only related to the sustainable development of the lead industry, but also to the reduction of lead pollution in the environment. The existing lead pyrometallurgical processes have two main issues, toxic lead emission into the environment and high energy consumption; the developing hydrometallurgical processes have the disadvantages of high electricity consumption, use of toxic chemicals and severe corrosion of metallic components. Here we demonstrate a new green hydrometallurgical process to recover lead based on a hydrogen-lead oxide fuel cell. High-purity lead, along with electricity, is produced with only water as the by-product. It has a >99.5% lead yield, which is higher than that of the existing pyrometallurgical processes (95-97%). This greatly reduces lead pollution to the environment.

A new lead single flow battery in a composite perchloric acid system with high specific surface capacity for large-scale energy storage

In this paper, we propose a full lead single flow battery with ultra-high specific surface capacity, which is achieved by the combined effects of electrochemically deposited lead as a negative electrode, electrodeposited PbO2 on Pt-plated titanium (Pt/Ti) plate as a positive electrode, and the composite perchloric acid with additives as an electrolyte. Experimental results indicate that this newly developed single flow battery provides a specific surface capacity of 125xa0mAhxa0cm−2, five times higher than that of the traditional lead single flow batteries using methanesulfonic acid or fluoroboric acid. The new lead single flow battery shows a good cycling performance with an average capacity efficiency of 95% and an energy efficiency of 85% after 500xa0cycles.