Preparation of basic lead carbonate from lead dust by hydrometallurgical processes

Recycling of lead dust generated from waste lead battery smelter has been attempted to minimize the environmental pollution. For this aim, preparation of basic lead carbonate from lead dust has been tested with hydrometallurgical processes. The major component of lead dust used in the work was found to be PbS and the fraction less than 325 mesh size was about 64%. As a result of leaching with nitric acid, leaching efficiency of lead was more than 95% at the condition of 4 N nitric acid, 40 °C, and slurry density of 50 g/l. In the leaching of lead dust with sulfuric acid, the addition of nitric acid was essentially required because only 4% of lead dust was dissolved by sulfuric acid without nitric acid. In the carbonation test, carbonation of lead sulfate could be successfully accomplished at the reaction temperature of 30 °C while direct carbonation of lead dust was found to give the negligible conversion.