A facile chemical route for recovery of high quality zinc oxide nanoparticles from spent alkaline batteries

• Published in: Waste management (Elmsford) 2016-05, Vol.51, p.190-195
• Main Authors: Deep, Akash, Sharma, Amit L., Mohanta, Girish C., Kumar, Parveen, Kim, Ki-Hyun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alkaline batteries; Electric Power Supplies; Electrodes; Electronic Waste - analysis; Environmental Pollutants - analysis; Excitation; Functional; Metal Nanoparticles - analysis; Nanoparticles; Phosphine oxide; Recovering; Recycling; Recycling - methods; Spent batteries; Waste Management - methods; Zinc; Zinc oxide; Zinc Oxide - analysis; ZnO
• ISSN: 0956-053X; 1879-2456
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2016.01.033

•A simple technique is proposed for the recovery of high purity zinc oxide nanoparticles from spent alkaline Zn–MnO2 batteries.•One-pot chemistry is developed with minimum chemical requirements at moderate temperature conditions.•ZnO nanoparticles of around 5nm size are obtained.•Separated MnO2 is also pure. Recycling of spent domestic batteries has gained a great environmental significance. In the present research, we propose a new and simple technique for the recovery of high-purity zinc oxide nanoparticles from the electrode waste of spent alkaline Zn–MnO2 batteries. The electrode material was collected by the manual dismantling and mixed with 5M HCl for reaction with a phosphine oxide reagent Cyanex 923® at 250°C for 30min. The desired ZnO nanoparticles were restored from the Zn-Cyanex 923 complex through an ethanolic precipitation step. The recovered particle product with about 5nm diameter exhibited fluorescent properties (emission peak at 400nm) when excited by UV radiation (excitation energy of 300nm). Thus, the proposed technique offered a simple and efficient route for recovering high purity ZnO nanoparticles from spent alkaline batteries.