Recycling Lead Acid Batteries
What Are Lead Acid Batteries?
Lead acid batteries are a rechargeable power source. They are mainly used as backup power supplies and to power things like:
- Automobiles
- Electric scooters
- Electric wheelchairs
These are just a few examples of items that use lead acid batteries. The acid provides the electrochemical effect that powers these machines.
Eventually, lead acid batteries become inefficient due to loss of water, overcharging and sulfation.
Recycling lead acid batteries is extremely important because they contain very toxic materials. Indiscriminate dumping of these materials could have an excessively negative impact on the environment. In fact, many countries have even banned incinerating or dumping lead acid batteries. Recycling of lead acid batteries also protects natural resources, reuses valuable materials, reduces pollution and more. Services like Interco will even purchase scrap lead acid batteries to recycle them appropriately.
Now that lead acid batteries themselves have been examined, one must be acquainted with the recycling of lead acid batteries.
How to Recycle Lead Acid Batteries
Recyclers always keep safety and the environment in mind when performing this procedure. This is why the recycling of lead acid batteries mostly takes place in a controlled environment far from residential areas. The recycling process consists of:
- First, collecting used or dead lead acid batteries.
- Next, recycling companies neutralize the acids. They introduce a base that subdues the corrosiveness of the acid so it can be disposed of correctly.
- Furthermore, a hammer mill breaks the battery apart through the process of hammering.
- Then, professional recyclers place the broken pieces in a vat so that the lead plates and other heavy materials sink to the bottom while the plastic floats.
- Subsequently, they transport the polypropylene plastics into a plastic recycler to melt and refine them.
- Afterwards, recyclers clean the lead plates and heat them in furnaces to melt. Then, they cast the molten lead into an ingot mold. A few minutes later, the impurities float to the top and the recyclers scrap them away.
- Finally, professional recyclers re-melt the pure ingot casts to use them in new batteries.
Since the recycling process has been discussed, it is crucial to understand why it is so important to the environment to recycle lead acid batteries.
The Importance of Recycling Lead Acid Batteries
Recycling of lead acid batteries provides an abundance of environmental benefits. A few of these include:
- Prevents toxic acids from contaminating the environment
- Protects natural resources
- Reuses valuable materials
- Reduces landfill population
- Reduces pollution
Recycling lead acid batteries safely discards toxic acids (i.e. sulfuric acid) rather then releasing them into the environment. Doing this also protects natural resources.
Additionally, there are several materials within lead acid batteries that are reusable. Some reusable materials include polypropylene plastic, sulfuric acid and lead. Reusing scrap lead acid batteries reduces landfill populations which ultimately leads to less pollution.
Conclusion
Overall, people and businesses use lead acid batteries to power automobiles, electric scooters, electric wheelchairs and more. Recycling lead acid batteries prevents toxic gasses from polluting the environment, reuses valuable materials, reduces pollution and so much more. Services like Interco even purchase lead acid batteries from consumers to recycle lead acid batteries safely.
If you are interested in recycling lead acid batteries, click here to contact Interco.