Process
Recycling Process
All kind of batteries contain substances, such as mercury, cadmium, and lead. We recycle the batteries as we understand the value of the materials in each battery. Lead has the most significant contribution for storing energy in batteries. Recycling of lead batteries becomes most important and highest recycling rates in modern time. It has a significant contribution to sustainable development of different recycled well known, valuable metals.
At Hindustan Lead alloy we collect used batteries and send to recycling centre. There the plastic and leads are extracted under strict environmental guidelines and sent to new battery manufacturers. This recycle process is continued multiple times to achieve extreme amount of useable leads in terms of both environment and cost-effective solution.
The recycling process of Lead – Acid batteries helps in environmental protection. It consists of basic stages
Breaking and Separation
At the first stage lead-acid scrap batteries are collected and unloaded at battery recycling plant. There the batteries are processed through a breaking and separation system. Batteries are crushed in the hammer mill that hammers broken up the batteries into pieces. Then these pieces are passed to a conveyor to clean off. There from the lead and plastics are separated. The entire system is placed in a closed loop and water is re-circulated for acid neutralization.
Smelting
Once lead parts are cleaned up, they are heated at high temperature using a smelting furnace. This melts the metals and produce high-grade metallic mixture. At smelting phase the molten lead are poured into an ingot mould that helps the impurities float to the top. By this way, the impurities are scraped away and the lead in the moulds is left to cool down. This extracted leads are removed from the moulds and sent to battery manufacturers. There they melt it again and uses to make new batteries.
Refining and Alloying
Lead Refining /alloying is a pyro-metallurgical process. In this process smelted lead is collected in a refining pot for further treatment of impurities. Lead smelting process produces the lead bullion that contain several impurities such as copper, arsenic, antimony, tin, bismuth, indium, silver and gold, etc. These impurities are valuable metals but they have negative effect on functional performance of lead in terms of hardness, toughness and corrosion resistance. Lead refining is to improve the lead purity and recover these valuable metals. Lead refining conducted using either fire-refining or electro-refining process.
Casting
Lead casting is done using Lead Ingot Casting Machine. This machine is combination of chain conveyor. At this step melted and pure leads are poured into chain grooves of the machine as per the size and capacity of chain. Moulds are pour using pump of flow valves. A series or water cooling and force air cooling produce stack of solid lead ingots that are handled by forklifts. At the exit point automatic hammering is occurred to release ingot out from the moulds and transfer to stacking area. These ingots are ready to use and can be sold to factories, manufacturers for the production of new products.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Batteries used in devices should not dump in recycle bins or within household garbage. Most of these batteries contain several harmful but valuable materials like mercury, cadmium, lead, lithium, zinc, nickel, and silver. One should be more cautious before disposing of batteries improperly. Dumping them in landfills or incineration leads to dangerous explosions. That not only an immediate threat to others as well as contribute to environmental damage. Also this lead to destroy of this ideal resources and affecting economy. So whether these dead batteries are used or discharged it needs to be disposed properly.