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In this articleI describe how to make a ceramic substrate lead dioxide anode following the ideas of some patents regarding inert substrate electrodes, but without the problematic, labour intensive procedure of making it conductive.

A brief history: to produce chlorates and/or perchlorates by electrolysis, one needs an inert anode, which has to resist the chlorine action. Many solutions are available. Platinum is the king of materials, but it is not cheap. Graphite is good for chlorates and one can use carbon rods instead, available as gouging rods. They are cheap, not always simple to find and unuseable for perchlorate production.

Others materials are usable, but I focused my attention on lead dioxide, as written in Wouter Visser's web page and after I exchanged some e-mails with Michael Mc Ardle.

Michael gave me a great amount of data, articles and references, and we started to make some GSLD (graphite substrate lead dioxide) anodes. You can read about it on Wouter's page and see that it's not a simple task. We quickly discovered that they were weak because it's difficult to obtain a perfect coating over a carbon rod, and the latter crumbled making the lead dioxide fall to the bottom of the electrolytic cell. Read the rest of this entry »

This (probably) is the first web-published attempt to make a lead dioxide (PbO₂) anode using a plastic substrate. I published a set of pictures on year 2000 without comments, so some of you may already saw them. There are other my plastic anode pictures in Micheal Mc Ardle site of the very first attempt I made (1999?).

Background

There is a little and virtual community around the world that is playing with lead dioxide anode. These anodes are hard to make but are a way to put on work an electrolitic cell to produce sodium perchlorate. One can use an expensive platinum anode too, but it's not funny! Lead dioxide anodes are made of an inhert substrate (graphite, ceramic, plastic, ...) and a thick layer of beta lead dioxide. Plating over graphite is relatively easy, because graphite is conductive. Ceramic and plastic have to be made conductive with some kind of treatment. This is what I'm starting to describe for a plastic substrate. I've done the same for a ceramic substrate (seek csld on menu).

Why plastic?

Plastic is ready available in many shapes. Giving a particular shape to a piace of ceramics (carborundum) is a task I wouldn't take. Graphite is harder to find, and it, even if inhert, presents wear problem. Read the rest of this entry »

Time ago I was involved in the home production of lead dioxide anodes. These kinds of anodes are used in the electrolysis process of NaCl to obtain sodium chlorates and sodim percholorates. They have many direct and indirect use in the paper industry and the pirotechnic compositions.

This document I rewrite below was found be me many years ago. I have not a reference to the original article.
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