Secondary lead smelter Pondy Oxides & Chemicals (POC) is partnering with Singapore-based start-up ACE Green Recycling to bring the “world’s largest” emission-free recycling plant to India.
Indian firm POC signed a 10-year, $12 million equipment supply and licensing deal with ACE to aid its goal of developing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission-free battery recycling facility in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh.
ACE’s technology deployment with POC is expected to start operations in Q4 of this year, and will be scaled up in phases.
ACE say it has developed a process that replaces the conventional smelting furnace with an oxygen-producing pH-basic electrochemical technology for recycling lead-acid batteries that release no greenhouse gas emissions.
POC is the first company in the manufacturing space to adopt the technology in the recycling process for used lead-acid batteries to lead ingots.
POC’s planned facility could have the capability to recycle more than 2.8 million lead-acid batteries a year during its first ten years.
Battery recycling start-up
BEST first reported on ACE in July, 2020 when it was announced that metals trader Nishchay Chadha had set up a company to invest in recycling firms in emerging markets with a short-term emphasis on lead-acid batteries and a long-term focus on electric vehicles.
Chadha set up ACE Recycling in Singapore, with an initial focus on trading and investing in lead battery recycling.
Chadha told BEST at the time: “We already have some tie-ups in place with recyclers in the region and you may see us making some announcements over the coming weeks.”
Last month, ACE raised more than $7 million in a funding round led by Circulate Capital. Climate Angels also participated in the round along with angel investors.
The latest funding round brought the firm’s total to about $10 million to date.
How the recycling process works
The two streams of lead components from the battery breaker – battery paste and battery metallics – are treated separately.
The battery paste is treated with proprietary chemicals in the presence of sodium hydroxide, removing sulphur and preparing it for the next stage.
This is then fed to the room temperature electrolysis process, producing ‘spongy’ lead of around 99.95% purity, claim the company.
This lead sponge is mechanically pressed into ‘e-lead’ briquettes, which are then transferred to normal melting kettles.
After minimal conventional refining and casting into ingots, the finished lead has a typical purity of better than 99.98%, say Ace.
The process drosses produced during refining are treated by a separate proprietary electrochemical technique to recover the lead content.
Battery metallics— grids, poles and connectors— are first chemically cleaned with proprietary chemicals to remove any paste adhering to the solid lead surface. These clean metallics are then melted directly in normal process kettles. At this stage, the metal can be refined to produce pure lead or alloyed to obtain high-value lead alloys.
