Lead removal and recovery from battery industry wastewaters by soluble starch xanthate

Treatment, removal and recovery of lead (3 mg/L) from battery industry wastewaters have been investigated utilising a chemical precipitation process with soluble starch xanthate (SX) at pH 5-6. A reactant ratio, i.e., SX/Pb(II) = 6 mol/mol, a reaction time of 15 min., the addition of 15 mg/L of a cationic polyelectrolyte and a final filtration gave residual lead concentrations in the liquid phase less than 0.2 mg/L, well below the maximum limit established by the EU Directive. Lead was extracted from the obtained sludge by oxidation with sodium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide solutions. The amounts of oxidant needed were quantified as 13.5 mol NaClO/mol Pb and one order of magnitude larger, for H2O2, the latter due to the competitive disproportion reaction of the oxidant. The metal extraction was quantitative using sodium hypochlorite; when hydrogen peroxide was used, the formation of insoluble PbSO4 (Anglesite) gave a 80% metal extraction. In both cases molar ratios between sulphate and lead ions in the extracted solutions were in the range 2.1-2.2, in agreement with the stoichiometries of the reactions. Lead can be quantitatively recovered from the extracted (NaClO) solutions, for reuse, after a chemical precipitation process with 1M NaOH at pH 9-9.5, in the form of hydrocerussite [Pb3(CO3)2(OH)2].