China has introduced a host of stricter new regulations to curb pollution in its secondary lead industry.
China’s existing secondary lead industry— as well as any new construction, reconstruction and expansion projects— will have to relocate ‘step-by-step’ to industrial parks at least one kilometer awayfrom residential areas.
The new regulations also lay out rules on scale, quality, technology, equipment and recovery rate of secondary lead projects.
One of the toughest rules will restrict secondary lead smelters to buy batteries that are intact with no acid leakage, or at most only have a 5% ‘damage rating’.
Firms will also have to comply with Pollution Control Standard for Hazardous Wastes Storage, and use automatic battery crushing and sorting facilities and technology to dispose of scrap lead-acid batteries.
The rules will effectively stamp out the small-scale secondary lead industry.
Scrap lead-acid battery pre-treatment projects will have to process at least 100,000/mt per year, with pre-treatment smelting having to process at least 60,000/mt per year.
Those smelting facilities will also be required to use the most advanced and energy efficient equipment.
This includes smelters having to use less than 125kg of coal per MT of lead in the smelting process, and less than 22kg per MT in the refining process.
They will also be obliged to recover more than 98% of lead, with less than 2% of waste residue containing lead.
The smelters will not be allowed to produce secondary lead without a discharging pollutant permit.
The new rules also penalise secondary lead smelters that have fallen foul of environmental laws within the previous two years before applying for a permit.
