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Say goodbye to lead

Lead has been one of the most widely used elements for hundreds of years.

Its high density has made it perfect for a wide range of applications, from musket-balls and bullets through to screening nuclear materials so as to protect us from dangerous radiation.

Its chemical attributes have lead to its use as a key ingredient of the ubiquitous lead-acid battery and even its oxides were for many decades used as a key ingredient of paints.

The ductility, malleability and self-protective oxidation characteristics of lead made it an ideal material for flashing roofs and its weight meant it has long-been the ballast of choice where it is important to combine significant mass with small size.

However, this once-popular element is now falling from grace and is being replaced in many of its most common applications.

One of the most well-known application in which lead was replaced was that of a paint pigment. Potentially toxic lead oxide has been replaced by the far more benign titanium dioxide and other compounds.

We all knew that lead-paint was effectively banned many years ago but today, the use of lead is in steep decline in other areas as well.

Many countries have banned the use of lead-shot near waterways - meaning that duck-hunters have to use alternative (and not nearly as good) materials such as steel or bismuth.

With countries such as Germany and Japan looking to reduce or eliminate nuclear power, the demand for lead blocks for radiation shielding may also be due to decline (although this is a very small percentage of the world's total lead-use).

Even the manufacture of hi-tech electronics has become significantly less reliant on lead. Lead-free "hippy" solder has replaced the old regular 60/40 type, despite nasty problems such as tin-whiskers.

The switch from CRTs to LCDs has meant that there is no longer a demand for the heavily leaded glass used in TV screens and monitors.

The humble lead-acid battery is also under significant threat from new lithium-based technologies which offer higher energy densities by both weight and volume, and lower environmental impact. Supercapacitors may also eventually evolve to the point where the entire concept of chemical batteries becomes redundant.

An interesting article in Science Daily has highlighted a new use for lead however - and it's a good one.

Who'd have thought that one of the environmental "nasties" could play such a huge part in the harnessing of renewable energy?

If the article is to be believed, the conversion of old car batteries into solar cells has to be a great transformation for such an element.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that more than a tiny fraction of the scrapped car batteries that will appear over the next decade or so, will ever find their lead content turning sunlight into electricity. One must wonder what will happen to the incredible mountain of "old lead" that a transition to lithium batteries will eventually produce.

Can't use it for paint, can't use it for buckshot, can't eat it -- will this huge stockpile of unrecovered lead become an environmental nightmare?

Fortunately for us, lead (as a metal) is relatively unreactive in neutral PH environments so storage of large quantities wouldn't be too much of a problem. Never the less, there will be a fiscal cost associated with doing so and that means for sure that there are bound to be many who simply dump their old lead in a big hole in the ground.

So... do we buy into lead futures in the hope that this new solar-cell technology creates a demand that exceeds the supply?

Or do we sell any futures we might already hold, in the expectation that prices will fall as lead becomes a liability rather than an asset?

Do readers have any potential uses for a stockpile of lead?

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