Manganese oxide synthesized from spent Zn-C battery for supercapacitor electrode application

Abstract

Manganese oxide (Mn 3 O 4 ) nanomaterials have promising potential to be used as supercapacitor electrode materials due to its high energy storage performance and environmental compatibility. Besides, every year huge volume of waste batteries including Zn-C battery ends up in landfill, which aggravates the burden of waste disposal in landfill and creates environmental and health threat. Thus, transformation of waste battery back into energy application, is of great significance for sustainable strategies. Compared with complex chemical routes which mostly apply toxic acids to recover materials from Zn-C battery, this study establishes the recovery of Mn 3 O 4 particles via thermal route within 900 °C under controlled atmosphere. Synthesized Mn 3 O 4 were confirmed by XRD, EDS, FTIR, XPS and Raman analysis and FESEM micrographs confirmed the coexistence of spherical and cubic Mn 3 O 4 particles. Mn 3 O 4 electrode derived from waste Zn-C battery demonstrate compatible electrochemical performance with standard materials and conventional synthesis techniques. Mn 3 O 4 electrode exhibited highest capacitance value of 125 Fg −1 at 5 mVs −1 scan rate. The stability of the electrode showed good retention in discharge and charge capacity by about 80% after 2100 cycles. This study demonstrates that waste Zn-C battery can be further utilized for energy storage application, providing sustainable and economic benefits.

Manganese Oxide Derived from a Spent Zn–C Battery as a Catalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

“…The schematic diagram of the overall process to synthesize Mn 3 O 4 particles from a heavy duty spent Zn−C battery is given in Scheme . More details of the experimental set up and battery assembly were given in a previous study . The battery black mass consists mainly of a manganese, zinc and chlorine bearing compound which resulted from the chemical reactions occurring at the anode and cathode electrodes.…”

“…Our previous work has investigated the rapidly developing e‐waste sector, focusing on the thermal transformation of waste into value‐added materials where novel approaches have been demonstrated as well as the evaluation of the performance of different waste derived products for different applications . To the best of our knowledge, no study had been reported on the performance of Mn 3 O 4 , from a used Zn−C battery as a catalyst for the OER.…”

“…A mortar‐pestle was used to ground the agglomerated powder and used for thermal study in a laboratory scale horizontal tube (quartz) furnace. Details of experimental set‐up is available in previous study . Thermal study of battery black mass was conducted at temperature 900 °C for 1 h under argon atmosphere followed by thermal treatment for another 1 h at 800 °C under air atmosphere.…”

Metal‐oxide nanomaterials recycled from E‐waste and metal industries: A concise review of applications in energy storage, catalysis, and sensing

“…While this work demonstrated a potentially promising route for the re‐use of zinc manganese batteries, the material was not used in an application and cannot be compared with virgin materials, and no overall cost or environmental analysis was performed. Furthermore, Farzana et al 21 recovered Mn 3 O 4 by initially pulverizing spent Zn‐C battery powder, which contained MnO 2 , in a ball milling machine, and subsequent thermal transformation of the powder up to 900°C. The treated Mn 3 O 4 powder showed promising performance as supercapacitor electrodes, with a specific capacitance of 125 F g −1 at 5 mV s −1 scan rate and 80% retention after 2100 cycles (1.2 A g −1 current density), it should be noted that a Mn 3 O 4 synthesized from a commercial precursor 22 showed a significantly higher capacitance: 416 F g −1 at 5 mV s −1 which raises questions whether this waste‐based material currently would be preferable to commercially produced competitors.…”

Facile synthesis of battery waste-derived graphene for transparent and conductive film application by an electrochemical exfoliation method

“…Consequently, spent Zn-C batteries are currently a major electronic waste (e-waste) from households, especially in developing countries. 2,3 The introduction of the 3R (reduce, reuse, and recycle) strategy does help mitigate the impact of electronic waste to some extent. However, the recycling work so far is fairly preliminary and focusing mainly on the recovery of metals, 4 with little done to recycle the graphite which may be readily used for the production of a high-performance, valueadded, two-dimensional material, graphene.…”