Italian engineering company STC has provided an update on its heavy plastic fraction process for recycling one stream from lead-acid batteries that does not normally get recycled.
Commercial Director Alberto Bergamaschini told BEST that its heavy plastic treatment system is in use at one industrial plant in the EU. The identity is not disclosed, but it is outside the Monbat Group, to which his company also belongs. He said STC is as far as he knows the only engineering company offering such a process.
The residual lead fraction, after washing, has a lower lead content and can contribute to being transformed to non-hazardous waste like RDF. It can then be sold as an energy source, for example to the cement manufacturing sector.
The characteristics of the produced PE briquettes are:
- < 1% lead
- < 15% humidity
- density approx. 600–750kg/m3.
Bergamaschini said STC established an exclusive technical partnership with an Italian company that specialises in manufacturing equipment for plastic recycling. It supplies special equipment like knives, mills and high-speed friction centrifuges used in the STC process.
The tie-up means STC is able to provide complete plastic recycling plants – including polypropylene granulation and extrusion – in the field of battery manufacturing and battery recycling.
Heavy plastics make up 4–5% of the battery weight and are sent to landfill as hazardous waste. It consists of non-floating plastics such as polyethylene separators as well as heavy polypropylene. The humidity of heavy plastics is also quite high, making handling sometimes difficult.
The company said the amount of ABS and heavy polypropylene is increasing and can amount to 20–30% of battery waste.
Bergamaschini said: “The market looks good, especially because many recycling companies are trying to reduce the crazy money they have to pay to waste management companies to dispose of this fraction.”
He said the process will be soon coupled with another process, still being developed, that will aid the possible recovery of the silica content of the separators as pure amorphous silica. That could then be used to manufacture semiconductors and solar panels.
