Recyclus Group, a subsidiary of Technology Minerals, aims to process 12 tonnes of lead-acid batteries per-hour, in a total of five plants in UK within ten years.
The plans will begin with the delivery this month of a breaker from Brazil to “industrialise what is traditionally a labour intensive market”.
Each of the planned plants will be tasked with producing 16,000 tonnes of lead paste per year.
The company says the front end supply for this first plant will be fed from UK supplies of automotive, industrial, portable and traction batteries.
Recyclus plans to accept product from the European market at the appropriate time.
The system will use a breaker, and a chemical processor to separate lead elements, battery acids and plastics for re-use in the global markets from the first quarter of 2022.
The used batteries will be sourced from the UK and put through three phases: comminution, density separation, and a hydrometallurgical method to produce lead paste.
The used acid will be cleaned and reprocessed as dilute acid or for chemical process.
The plant is expected to be installed in October/November, commissioned in December and fully operational in January 2022.
UK lead battery recycling
Recyclus’ plans seem optimistic given the collection rate of lead batteries in the UK.
The UK collected 7,573 tonnes of lead batteries during the first two quarters of this year, according to figures published by the Environment Agency on the National Packaging Waste Database
The agency reported in March 2020 that the UK collected 10,746 tonnes of lead batteries during 2019, and 1,212 tonnes of lead batteries placed on the market that year.
