ACE Green Recycling has appointed Farid Ahmed as its VP global strategy & business development.
Ahmed, who is well known throughout the industry and the battery conference circuit, was formerly principal analyst lead markets at Wood Mackenzie where he worked for seven years providing objective analysis and advice on assets, companies and markets.
Ahmed said he was absolutely delighted to be joining ACE Green Recycling as it was a “dynamic and forward-looking” enterprise which was leading the charge for truly transformational recycling technologies.
He said: “This company is really going places and will make a significant contribution towards suppling raw materials for lithium and lead battery production for the future.
“It’s vital we fully exploit secondary sources of supply to minimise the environmental impact of battery production in order to realise our energy transition ambitions and imperative, and ACE Green Recycling will be at the centre of that.”
The US-based company has developed a recycling process for lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries and is working on clean technology solutions for other metallic waste streams.
US recycling plans
In May, ACE revealed plans to develop a recycling park in Texas, US capable of processing a combined 120,000 metric tonnes of lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries a year.
When operating at full capacity in 2025, the firm expects the facility to process and recycle up to 100,000 metric tonnes of lead-acid batteries each year.
The company is also planning to open four lithium-ion recycling facilities with a planned total annual capacity of more than 30,000 tonnes.
The firm— which has offices in the US, Singapore and India— is planning to open facilities in Thailand and India (with a combined 10,000 tonnes capacity) and a 20,000 tonnes capacity factory in the US.
The Indian facility is expected to be commissioned this year with initial processing capacity of 1,800 tonnes per year.
The plants in Thailand and US are scheduled to come online next year.
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.
