Will antimony be added to energy storage systems

The industrial importance of antimony is mainly derived from its use as flame retardant in plastics, coatings, and electronics, but also as decolourizing agent in glass, alloys in lead-acid batteries, and catalysts for the production of PET polymers.

Current primary antimony production is unsustainable as current reserves account for only 10–11 years of production at current levels which could be aggravated by rising demand from existing and future antimony applications such as liquid–metal batteries and thermoelectric materials.

7. Antimony, usually in the form of antimony trioxide, enters the environment mainly as a result of industrial activities such as coal burning or smelting of antimony-containing ores. Antimony can also be naturally present in the environment via weathering of rocks and runoff from soils.

Antimony produces volatile antimony oxyhalides (SbOX) and antimony trihalides (SbX3) in the condensed phase and facilitates the transfer of halogen and antimony into the gas phase, where it functions as a radical scavenger and retards the flame (Papazoglou, 2004). This application takes a major portion of the antimony produced worldwide.

However, one of the remaining obstacles for the implementation of antimony recycling in the industry is the upscaling from laboratory methods to industrial processes. Further work needs to be carried out on pilot scale to see which methods are sufficiently robust and flexible.

Finally, Anderson also studied the recovery of antimony from a spent catalyst used in the production of acrolein from propylene. Antimony was successfully leached out (99.5 %) using HCl, leaving the silica substrate intact. Antimony can be found in a variety of products, which eventually end up as waste.