Betts electrorefining

Betts Electrorefining Process Betts Electrorefining Process... 

The Betts electrorefining process was developed by Cominco at its smelter in Trail, British Columbia, Canada, in 1902. Lead from the smelter is melted and cast into anode slabs. Cathode starter sheets are made from refined lead. The electrolyte composi-tionvariesfromGOtolOOg lead as lead... 

Electrolysis of lead fluosilicate solutions is well established for lead refining by the Betts process, as detailed in Chapter 13. The principal advantage is the ability to produce a dense cathode deposit rather than a powder deposit. The process has largely been examined for the treatment of secondary lead materials, which are converted either into lead carbonate or PbO from mixed sulfate-oxide residues, and are then leached in fluosiUcic acid. The US Bureau of Mines developed an approach along these lines as an extension of the Betts electrorefining process to electrowinning (Cole, Lee and Paulson, 1981). This approach was also developed and applied on a commercial scale by RSR Corporation in the USA (Prengaman and McDonald, 1990). 

This process was developed in the 1980s to address environmental problems associated with secondary lead smelting at that time. It extended the Betts electrorefining technology nsing flnosihcate electrolytes to process desnlfnrised battery pastes and produce a dense cathode deposit of pnre lead metal. 

Kubota, H, Kusakabe, T, Takei, K and Takewaki, M, 1995. Current operations of Sumitomo Metal Mining s Betts lead electrorefining, in Proceedings Zinc and Lead 95 Symposium, Sendai, pp 353-366. 

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