Hydrometallurgical recovery of silver from waste silver oxide button cells

In recent years, recycling of household batteries has attracted much attention mainly with respect to environmental aspects in addition to the savings. Small silver oxide primary cells used in electric watches become a waste after their life is over. Recycling procedures are needed to prevent any environmental impact from these wastes and to recover the value inherent in the scrap. Smelting and electrolytic methods are discussed for silver recovery from this battery waste. Acid leaching of waste batteries and precipitation of silver as silver chloride followed by smelting at 1000 °C yields a silver recovery of about 83%. An electrolytic route is studied as an alternative to the smelting operation and involves the electrodeposition of silver with higher purity from a silver thiosulfate complex prepared from silver chloride. The electrolysis is potentiostatically controlled at a potential of −0.400 to −0.600 V (SCE) for avoiding side-reactions such as the sulfiding of silver. Although recovery methods have been identified in principle, their suitability for mixed small battery waste and economic factors have yet to be demonstrated.