Start-ups aim to change car battery recycling, clean up world's most polluting industry

Aqua Metals

20/04/2021 12:12

By Shivani Singh and Mayank Bhardwaj
    GHAZIABAD, India, April 20 (Reuters) - A handful of startups
are trying to find a new way to recycle used car batteries,
using water, chemicals and electricity to produce lead instead
of the hazardous, high-heat smelting that has been identified as
the world's most polluting industry.
    One of the first to bring a new recycling technology to
market is ACE Green Recycling Inc, which has developed a
room-temperature process that turns lead from scrap batteries
into ingots, its Singapore-based CEO Nishchay Chadha told
Reuters.
    At its recycling plant in Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of the
Indian capital New Delhi, the firm uses machines that run on
electricity to refine lead components from scrap batteries into
briquettes, which are then cast into ingots and sold to battery
manufacturers. Plastic and other components are recycled
separately. 
    Worldwide, the start-ups so far form only a tiny fraction of
the lead battery recycling industry, which is estimated to be a
$17.5 billion per year business, counting for just the lead
value.  But they claim the new technologies produce next to no
emissions compared to traditional smelting.
    Analysts and experts said the new technologies are promising
but it was too early to say if any of them was commercially
viable on a large scale.
    "I think it's a great step and if it's economically viable
it's a terrific step," CEO Richard Fuller at environmental
agency Pure Earth said. 
    Typically, traditional battery recycling units use an
ultra-hot furnace at over 1,000 degrees Celsius to refine lead
components. If the unit is unregulated, as many are in poorer
nations where the sales of cars and car batteries are surging,
toxic fumes often escape into the air and effluents seep into
groundwater.
    Pure Earth and Green Cross Switzerland have said lead
battery recycling is the most polluting industry in the world.
"Emissions and fugitive dusts released from the small scale
melting and casting of molten lead and from waste are the main
exposure pathways," the agencies said in a 2016 report.
    Farid Ahmed, the principal lead analyst at Wood Mackenzie,
said the new technologies had "the potential to be
game-changers".
    "But (they) need to reach that point where they can
establish the validity of their processes when scaled up to
industrial levels of output, plus that they can be competitive
in production costs," he said. 
    Recycling of lead batteries accounts for about two-thirds of
the world's supply of refined lead, which is also used in
cables, ammunition and paints. 
    The metal currently trades at roughly $2,000 per tonne.
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    ONE PERCENT OF REFINED LEAD
    "We use electricity, and that helps our plant operate at
room temperature, and that's why there's zero-emission of gases
and effluents from our plant," Dhruvendra Kumar Tyagi, ACE
Green's general manager, told Reuters.
    Luminous Power Technologies, owned by France's Schneider
Electric  SCHN.PA  and one of India's largest auto battery
manufacturers, provides ACE Green with more than 200 tonnes per
month of used batteries, which ACE said it turns into 120-130
tonnes of lead and sells back to the firm. 
    Luminous did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
    ACE Green has signed an agreement with Altus Asia Group in
Singapore to licence its technology to recycle 5,000 tonnes per
year of used lead-acid batteries in the first half of 2022, with
the potential to double that capacity in 2023, its Managing
Director David Leong said. 
    The investment for this plant will be $5 million which Leong
expects to raise via private equity and private partners.
    "(The technology) basically solves all the problems of
running a traditional lead recycling smelter," said Leong,
adding that the company plans to also set up plants in Malaysia,
Vietnam and South Korea using this technology.
    ACE Green says it has inked licensing and joint-venture
deals to recycle 90,000 tonnes per year of used lead-acid
batteries with four commercial recyclers in 11 countries, which
would produce a total of about 55,800 tonnes per year of lead.
It is also planning a 12,000 tonnes per year used lead-acid
batteries recycling plant in Australia which would produce 7,440
tonnes per year of lead.
    All of that would be equivalent to 1% of the world's
recycled lead.
    Other companies are developing similar processes.
    Nasdaq-listed Aqua Metals  AQMS.O , which uses water-based
solvents at room temperature to recycle used batteries to
produce refined lead, is not initially looking to replace
informal recycling or backyard smelting but is focusing on the
regulated market where its product can be marketed as an
environment friendly, bolt-on technology, Chief Executive Steve
Cotton told Reuters. 
    He said he plans to commercialize the process and roll out
licences as early as June this year.
    Ola Hekselman of Imperial College London has been working on
a proprietary solvents and chemical process to extract lead from
batteries and has co-founded a company called Solveteq which
aims to commercialize the technology in the next 18 to 24
months.
    "Just being sustainable and green may not be enough for us
to convince others to switch to this technology," Hekselman
said.
    "We have to be economically more competitive as well."

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FACTBOX-Key facts about used lead-acid battery recycling   
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 (Reporting by Shivani Singh in Beijing and Mayank Bharadwaj in
New Delhi; additional reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
 ((ShivaniSingh2@thomsonreuters.com; +86 10 5669 2115;))