Lead-acid battery recycler Revere Smelting & Refining Corporation (RSR) has installed a $55 million system to reduce metallic particle emissions at a third US plant.
The installment of the Wet Electrostatic Precipitator (WESP) system brings emissions at its Middletown, New York, plant to around 25 pounds per year.
The federally allowed amount is 400-500 pounds per year.
The system, which replaces three stacks with a single 120 feet high one, is an 8,000-square foot addition to the company’s plant where around 10 million lead-acid auto batteries are recycled each year.
The WESP technology removes acid gasses and particle matter uses a process of heating exhaust through the use of electricity, then isolating and removing the particulate matter.
The system uses a reverberatory furnace and an electric arc furnace (EAF) on the conversion furnaces. The WESP also controls emissions on the feed drying kiln and hooding on the refining kettles.
The company has already installed the technology at its facilities Quemetco facility in the City of Industry, California, and in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Quemetco facility has reduced its lead emissions from 614.96 lbs per year to less than 5 lbs. per year – and reduced over 90% of arsenic, nickel and cadmium emissions
Company manager of Environmental Technical Support, Michael Buckantz Buckantz, told the MidHudsonNews website that the investment was part of RSR’s responsibility as pioneers in the industry.
He said: “We like to consider ourselves leaders in the industry in: safety, the health of our employees, and on environmental issues: air, water.
“We want to lead the way and we want to show the better path to maintain this industry in the United States.”
Robert E. Finn RSR Corporation’s president and CEO said: “We believe WESP technology should be the standard for all lead battery recycling facilities and we urge EPA to take the necessary steps to make that happen.”
RSR is the currently the only company in the lead smelting industry to have fully adopted and installed WESP technologies at its facilities.
The investment is further confirmation RSR is looking to prove itself after an $18 million cleanup of lead and arsenic soil/water pollution at the site in 2012, conducted under the direction of the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
Lead was the primary contaminant detected in the soils, fill material, sediment, surface water, and groundwater. Arsenic, antimony, cadmium, and chromium were also found at lower concentrations.
The pollution was believed to have stemmed from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when lead slag and battery parts were used as fill at the site, according to the DEC.
Image: construction to build the Wet Electrostatic Precipitatior (WESP) at RSR’s Middletown, New York facility