Let’s learn about the Lead Acid Recycling Process!

Lead Acid Battery is a type of battery that contains a chemical called Lead Acid. Lead-acid batteries are mainly used in cars. Now we are going to talk about how these batteries are taken care of.

Lead Acid Batteries chemicals are not very good for the environment. Let’s take a look at how they are recycled!

Step 1. The old used lead-acid batteries are transported to a Lead Facility. The Plastic casing is broken down and the lead/plastic is dumped into the water. The plastic casing remains are blown into a truck which transports them to a plastic recycling facility. All that remains is the lead which is neutralized to a lead paste which is screened out.

Step 2. The lead paste is put into a pot of water where it is dissolved. A worker takes a sample of the water to see if the substances are settling properly. After a few days/hours, the hard lead remains are removed and the water is then safe to be poured down the drain.

Step 3. A few shovels of refined coal are added to the remaining lead to eliminate moisture. But this coal is unharmful to our environment. After, the hard lead is taken into a dryer for 20 minutes until all of the remaining moisture is eliminated from the Lead.

Step 4. Then for 8 hours, the lead is placed in a furnace and melted into the liquid lead. The lead is then taken out and placed onto platforms which shape it into a lead ingot. Did you know that each lead ingot has enough lead to power 3 car batteries! After it is shaped, the lead is burned and reshaped to lead strips.

Step 5. Using these lead strips and the plastic we talked about earlier, new lead-acid batteries are then manufactured.

Note: Even though only 1% of people know about the overall Battery Recycling Process, for Lead Acid Batteries, 99% of people recycle them properly. This makes me very happy because lead-acid batteries are one of the most dangerous batteries out there. We should do the same for all of the other batteries like Lithium Batteries!

Author: Sri Nihal Tammana