Electronic and interfacial structures tailoring of IrFe@Co-NCB with enhanced selective electrocatalytic oxygen evolution performance for lead recovery

Abstract

The clean recovery of waste Lead-acid batteries(LABs) is a vital strategy to achieve sustainable lead resources and eliminate persistent environmental pollutants extensively utilized in fuel vehicles as ignition power. The reported hydrometallurgy processes suffer from slow reaction kinetics and high thermodynamic barriers of water anodic oxidation, resulting in intensified competitive oxidation reactions of Pb²⁺ and H₂O molecules with low OER selectivity and lead recovery efficiency. Herein, we proposed a multi-metallic electrocatalyst, IrFe@Co-NCB, with optimized electronic and interfacial structures. The synergistic doping of Ir and Fe within the Co-NCB support enhances charge transfer and intermediate adsorption, promoting selective OER while suppressing PbO₂ deposition, thereby boosting reaction kinetics and selectivity and substantially lowering the overall energy consumption. As a result, the catalyst achieves a low OER overpotential of 265 mV@10 mA cm⁻² and a high Ir mass activity of 2.404 A mg⁻¹ in 1.0 M methanesulfonic acid (MSA), along with excellent long-term stability. The IrFe@Co-NCB based lead electrolysis system achieves a high OER selectivity of 99.53% with reduced energy consumption(527.56 kWh t⁻¹ Pb). This work provides mechanistic insights and a practical strategy for developing advanced OER catalysts and environmentally friendly lead recycling systems.