The dull grey colour of lead pipes and cables is caused by the oxygen of the air combining with the metal so as to form a very thin film or skin composed of an oxide of lead. Lead is not at all easily corroded or eaten away. Unlike iron and steel, it does not need protection by painting. Underneath the film, lead is a bright, shiny bluish-white metal. When you scrape it you notice how soft lead is. It is this softness that makes it easy to squeeze or roll lead into different shapes.

For winemakers in the Roman Empire, nothing but lead would do. When boiling crushed grapes, Roman vintners insisted on using lead pots or lead-lined copper kettles. “For, in the boiling,” wrote Roman winemaker Columella, “brazen vessels throw off copper rust which has a disagreeable flavour.” Lead’s sweet overtones, by contrast, were thought to add complementary flavours to wine and to food as well. The metal enhanced one-fifth of the 450 recipes in the Roman Apician Cookbook, a collection of first through fifth century recipes attributed to gastrophiles associated with Apicius, the famous Roman gourmet. From the Middle Ages on, people put lead acetate or “sugar of lead” into wine and other foods to make them sweeter. Lead touched many areas of Roman life. It made up pipes and dishes, cosmetics and coins, and paints. Eventually, as a host of mysterious maladies became more common, some Romans began to suspect a connection between the metal and these illnesses. But the culture’s habits never changed, and some historians believe that many among the Roman aristocracy suffered from lead poisoning.

Julius Caesar, for example, managed to father only one child, even though he enjoyed women as much as he enjoyed wine. His successor, Caesar Augustus, was reported to be completely sterile. Some scholars suggest that lead could have been the culprit for the condition of both men and a contributing factor to the fall of the Roman Empire. A form of lead intoxication known as saturnine gout takes its name from ancient Rome. Saturn was a demonic god, a gloomy and sluggish figure who ate his own children. The Romans noticed similarities between symptoms of this disorder and the irritable god, and named the disease after him. Scientists have since learned that while there are similarities between saturnine gout and primary gout, such as elevated blood uric acid levels, these are in fact two distinct diseases that could not have been cured.

Lead was also used widely for fashioning decorative objects. The oldest known lead-containing object made by human hands is a small statue found in Turkey, from 6,500 B.C. Egyptian Pharaohs between 3,000 and 4,000 B.C. used lead to glaze pottery. Lead was useful as well in construction. The Babylonians and the Assyrians used soldered lead sheets to fasten bolts and construct buildings. The Chinese used lead to make coins 4,000 years ago, as did the ancient Greeks and Romans. Early warriors made bullets out of it, and gladiators covered their fists with leaden knuckles.

Lead found new uses in the one of the fifteenth century’s greatest advancements, the printing press, where it was used to produce moveable type. During the same period, stained glass windows held together by lead frames decorated medieval churches, and architects used lead to seal spaces between stone blocks and to frame roof installations.

In BPL case we would be using the secondary lead which we get from scrap batteries which we have been collecting over the years.

Most of the lead produced comes from secondary sources. Lead scrap includes lead-acid batteries, cable coverings, pipes, sheets and lead coated, or terne bearing, metals. Solder, product waste and dross may also be recovered for its small lead content. Most secondary lead is used in batteries.

To recover lead from a battery, the battery is broken, and the components are classified. The lead containing components are processed in blast furnaces for hard lead or rotary reverberatory furnaces for fine particles. The blast furnace is similar in structure to a cupola furnace used in iron foundries. The furnace is charged with slag, scrap iron, limestone, coke, oxides, dross, and reverberatory slag. The coke is used to melt and reduce the lead. Limestone reacts with impurities and floats to the top. This process also keeps the lead from oxidizing. The molten lead flows from the blast furnace into holding pots. Lead may be mixed with alloys, including antimony, tin, arsenic, copper, and nickel. It is then cast into ingots.

Smelting of Lead helps in putting recycling process, whereby instead of just throwing away scrap batteries, these scrap can be put into good use of getting the ingots and individuals getting some money instead of just discarding their scrap batteries.

Exposure to excessive levels of lead can cause damage to the brain and kidneys, impair hearing; and lead to numerous other associated problems. On average, each automobile manufactured contains approximately 12 kilograms of lead. Around 96% lead is used in the common lead-acid battery, while the remaining 4% in other applications including wheel balance weights, protective coatings, and vibration dampers.

Recycling Perspectives

Recycling of Lead-Acid Batteries is a profitable business, albeit dangerous, in developing countries. Many developing countries buy used lead-acid batteries (also known as ULABs) from industrialized countries (and the Middle East) in bulk in order to extract lead. ULAB recycling occurs in almost every city in the developing world where ULAB recycling and smelting operations are often located in densely populated urban areas with hardly any pollution control and safety measures for workers.

Usually, ULAB recycling operations release lead-contaminated waste into the environment and natural ecosystems.  In fact, Blacksmith Institute estimates that over 12 million people are affected by lead contamination from the processing of Used Lead Acid Batteries in the developing world, with South America, South Asia, and Africa being the most affected regions.

Associated Problems

The problems associated with the recycling of ULABs are well-documented and recognized by the industry and the Basel Convention Secretariat. As much of the informal ULAB recycling is small-scale and difficult to regulate or control, progress is possible only through cleanup, outreach, policy, and education.

For example, Blacksmith’s Lead Poisoning and Car Batteries Project is currently active in eight countries, including Senegal, the Dominican Republic, India, and the Philippines. The Project aims to end widespread lead poisoning from the improper recycling of ULABs, and consists of several different strategies and programs, with the most important priority being the health of children in the surrounding communities.

Lead poisoning, from improper recycling of used batteries, impacts tens of millions of people worldwide.

There is no effective means of tracking shipments of used lead-acid batteries from foreign exporters to recycling plants in the developing world which makes it difficult to trace ULABs going to unauthorized or inadequate facilities.

The Way Forward

An effective method to reduce the hazards posed by transboundary movements of ULABs is to encourage companies that generate used lead batteries to voluntarily stop exporting lead batteries to developing countries. These types of voluntary restrictions on transboundary shipments can help pressure companies involved in recycling lead batteries in developing to improve their environmental performance. It may also help encourage policymakers to close the gaps in both regulations and enforcement capacity.

Another interesting way is to encourage the regeneration of lead-acid batteries which can prolong their life significantly. The advantage of battery regeneration over regular recycling is the reduced carbon footprint incurred by mitigating the collecting, packing, shipping, and smelting of millions of tonnes of batteries and their cases. Most importantly, it takes about 25kWh of energy to remake a 15Kg, 12V 70Ah battery and just 2.1KWh to regenerate it electronically.

At the heart of most electronics, today are rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). But their energy storage capacities are not enough for large-scale energy storage systems (ESSs). Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) could be useful in such a scenario due to their higher theoretical energy storage capacity. They could even replace LIBs in other applications like drones, given their lightweight and lower cost.

But the same mechanism that is giving them all this power is keeping them becoming a widespread practical reality. Unlike LIBs, the reaction pathway in LSBs leads to an accumulation of solid lithium sulfide (Li₂S₆) and liquid lithium polysulfide (LiPS), causing a loss of active material from the sulfur cathode (positively charged electrode) and corrosion of the lithium anode (negatively charged electrode). To improve battery life, scientists have been looking for catalysts that can make this degradation efficiently reversible during use.

In a new study published in ChemSusChem, scientists from Gwangju Institute of Technology (GIST), Korea, report their breakthrough in this endeavor. “While looking for a new electrocatalyst for the LSBs, we recalled a previous study we had performed with cobalt oxalate (CoC₂O₄) in which we had found that negatively charged ions can easily adsorb on this material’s surface during electrolysis. This motivated us to hypothesize that CoC₂O₄ would exhibit similar behavior with sulfur in LSBs as well,” explains Prof. Jaeyoung Lee from GIST, who led the study.

To test their hypothesis, the scientists constructed an LSB by adding a layer of CoC₂O₄ on the sulfur cathode.

Sure enough, observations and analyses revealed that CoC₂O₄‘s ability to adsorb sulfur allowed the reduction and dissociation of Li₂S₆ and LiPS. Further, it suppressed the diffusion of LiPS into the electrolyte by adsorbing LiPS on its surface, preventing it from reaching the lithium anode and triggering a self-discharge reaction. These actions together improved sulfur utilization and reduced anode degradation, thereby enhancing the longevity, performance, and energy storage capacity of the battery.

Charged by these findings, Prof. Lee envisions an electronic future governed by LSBs, which LIBs cannot realize. “LSBs can enable efficient electric transportation such as in unmanned aircrafts, electric buses, trucks and locomotives, in addition to large-scale energy storage devices,” he observes. “We hope that our findings can get LSBs one step closer to commercialization for these purposes.”

Perhaps, it’s only a matter of time before lithium-sulfur batteries power the world.

ML And Battery Life Cycle

The research team has been working to develop a long-lasting electric vehicle battery that can be charged in 10 minutes.

“Battery technology is important for any type of electric powertrain. By understanding the fundamental reactions that occur within the battery we can extend its life, enable faster charging and ultimately design better battery materials. We look forward to building on this work through future experiments to achieve lower-cost, better-performing batteries,” said Patrick Herring, a senior scientist of Toyota Research Institute.

Earlier studies used more conventional machine learning forms to accelerate battery testing and find out the best charging method. Though the studies made major progress in determining battery lifetime, they did not reveal much about the science behind why a few batteries last longer than the others.

The current research teaches machines how to learn a new type of failure mechanism to design better and safer fast-charging batteries. In general, fast charging stresses and damages the battery. Better practices would help battery technology and fight climate change, the team said. Further, this approach can be used for developing grid-scale battery systems for producing wind and solar electricity.

The team was able to optimize the fast charging protocol for lithium-ion batteries within a month using machine learning. Without ML, this would usually take two years. “At the end of the day, we see our job as accelerating the pace of battery R&D. Whether it’s discovering new chemistry or finding a way to make a safer battery, it’s all very time-consuming. We’re trying to save time,” said Will Chueh, an associate professor at Stanford University, who also led the study. 

The Experiment

For this experiment, the team took a closer look at the Lithium ions movement between the cathode and anode — made of nano-sized grains lumped together as particles — during charging and discharging. In particular, the behavior of cathode particles, comprising nickel, manganese, and cobalt (NMC), were observed in detail. NMC is the most widely used material in electric vehicle batteries. The particles absorb lithium ions when the battery is discharging and release them when the battery is charging.

The team got an overall look at the particles when the battery was being fast charged using X-rays from SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource. The same particles were later examined with scanning X-ray transmission microscopy, which focuses on individual particles. The data obtained from these experiments; information from mathematical models on fast charging; and physics and chemistry equations were used in the scientific machine learning algorithm. The team said this is the first time scientific machine learning has been used in battery technology.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.We travel with him to Roswell.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.We travel with him to Roswell.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.We travel with him to Roswell.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.We travel with him to Roswell.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there. VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who’s been called the real-life Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, NM on the anniversary of the 1947 UFO Crash to talk to believers, skeptics and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.We travel with him to Roswell.