RECYCLING NEWS

Nyrstar is restarting its Port Pirie lead smelter in South Australia following a planned 55-day outage.

The shutdown, which began last October, was part of an AUD45 million ($28 million) works and maintenance programme — focused on rebricking the hearth of the top submerged lance furnace, as well as major capital works in the blast furnace, acid plant and across the site.

A Nyrstar spokesperson told Batteries International on January 4 that the plant was restarting production, having concluded work to “further support improvement of Port Pirie’s emissions and operational performance”.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson confirmed the start of “early works” on its product recycling facility at Port Pirie aimed at further reducing lead in air concentrations.

Once completed, the facility will be sealed and under negative air pressure, allowing intermediate materials used in the production process to be stored and mixed in an enclosed facility.

The facility will be built near existing processing plants to “reduce the handling and transport of materials in the open air”, Nyrstar said.

South Australia’s state government is contributing AUD7 million to the AUD23 million project.

Port Pirie general manager Mat Lynn said: “Nyrstar Australia will continue to focus on how we can continue to improve our operations to reduce lead in air concentrations and complement the targeted lead abatement program and actions of the state government, Port Pirie Regional Council and people of Port Pirie to reduce lead levels within the local community.”

In June 2020, Port Pirie signed a new licence agreement with Australia’s Environment Protection Authority to cap emissions by 20% as well as submit a comprehensive lead monitoring plan.

The Port Pirie smelter has been in continuous operation for more than 130 years on the Port Pirie river, 230km north of Adelaide. The plant is one of the world’s largest multi-metal smelters, producing lead, silver and by-products such as sulphuric acid.

Aqua Metals said on January 11 it had recovered its first battery metal from spent lithium-ion batteries at production scale by electroplating.

The company claimed its pilot Li AquaRefining system had proven its ability to remove impurities and trace metals from tons of recycled lithium battery black mass and then “selectively recover pure metal using electricity” instead of using furnaces or chemical processes.

Aqua Metals is one of several firms competing in the space for environmentally friendly recycling of lithium battery parts. RecycLiCo Battery Materials (formerly American Manganese) announced in November significant advances in its hydrometallurgical testing and its demonstration plant has now advanced to the next stage of the RecycLiCo patented process to demonstrate lithium recovery at demo-scale.

Aqua Metals says copper is the first of the products to be recovered using the process and the company said it intends to follow by recovering lithium hydroxide, nickel, cobalt, and manganese dioxide.

Aqua Metals president and CEO Steve Cotton said the move represented a “significant milestone” towards supporting development of a US domestic supply chain for materials essential to electric vehicle and battery energy storage system manufacturers.

A new lead battery breaker plant supplied by Italian engineering company STC for Tunisian battery producer Nour is to start operations before spring, Batteries International has learned.

STC said last April that it had been awarded a $5 million contract to supply a lead battery recycling plant to Nour.

An STC spokesperson said on January 4 that production of the five-tonnesper-hour unit had been completed on schedule and was in the pre-assembly stage ahead of delivery.

Installation of the unit will be carried out by technicians of STC, which is part of the Monbat group.

Technology featured at the plant will include the company’s novel ‘U4Lead’ paste desulfurization tech, which STC says will produce “highly desulfurized lead paste and ammonium sulfate as a by-product, which is easily saleable as fertilizer”.

The facility will comprise an automated scrap batteries feeding system, together with systems for magnetic metals separation, battery crushing with an STC hammer mill, components separation, paste filtration with membrane squeezing, a fully automatic filter press, electrolyte collection and neutralization and a general ventilation and gas scrubbing system.

STC said the components separation system will be able to recover polypropylene chips, PE separators, fine metallic lead, poles and posts, fine paste, coarse paste and clean electrolyte.

The Nour recycling deal was agreed following Monbat’s formal acquisition of a 60% stake in Nour, announced on April 6 in 2022.

The CEO of lead recycler Gravita India has welcomed the introduction of a series of regulations to ensure lithium ion and other batteries are disposed of responsibly and of which some are subject to waste management rules that currently only apply to lead batteries.

Yogesh Malhotra also welcomed plans to introduce a national online system of tradeable EPR certificates, similar to carbon credits, which he said “created opportunities for recyclers” such as Gravita in terms of buying waste batteries on the domestic market and exporting recycled lead products.

He said as new regulations start to force unregulated recycling out of the market, he expects this will eventually lead to consolidation of only around 20 or so main industry recycling players in India.

However, he said there would still be scope for the reduced number of recyclers to increase overall lead production by two to three times current levels in the years ahead.

Gravita, which has a panIndia presence, could see even higher growth, he said.

Malhotra told a secondquarter earnings call on November 3 the rules, some of which supersede regulations dating back to 2001, are designed to crack down on unregulated battery recycling and ensure all such activities are managed in “a proper, organized manner”, as is the case with lead batteries.

The new rules apply to entities involved in the collection, segregation, transportation, refurbishment, and recycling of waste batteries, in addition to producers and those already covered by existing rules.

“If we can shift away from the disorganized processes we have now, that is going to help companies such as Gravita,” Malhotra said.

He also welcomed incoming ‘extended producer responsibility’ (EPR) requirements — which will make producers responsible for the collection, recycling or refurbishment of waste batteries, and for the use of recovered materials from waste.

EPR requires all waste batteries to be collected and sent for recycling/refurbishment and it prohibits disposal of batteries in landfills or by incineration.

The EPR regulations are being finalized and should enter into force within six months, Malhotra said.

In addition, battery producers will be required to register with the Central Pollution Control Board, submit an EPR plan and file regular returns detailing information on waste batteries collected or received.

Malhotra revealed that Gravita expects to expand its lead production capacity to 425,000 tonnes by 2026, on the back of increased investment in recycling facilities in India and abroad.

The company’s Ghana lead battery recycling plant is currently one of its biggest and producing around 16,000 tonnes per annum, he said.

Gravita as a whole boosted its lead production capacity by around 6% in the first half of financial year 2023 (which began last March) from 159,000 tonnes to 168,000 tonnes, compared to the corresponding period a year ago.

In terms of future prospects for the company, Malhotra said diversification will lead to at least 25% of its business by 2025-26 coming from recycling commodities other than lead — such as aluminium and plastic — and in future, lithium, copper and paper.

Yogesh Malhotra, CEO, Gravita

ACE Green Recycling is teaming up with Tabono Investments to build and operate battery recycling facilities for lead and lithium ion batteries in South Africa, the firms announced on December 13.

The partners have signed the term sheet to form a joint venture to build and operate two plants on greenfield sites that will separately process and recycle lead and lithium ion batteries using ACE’s technology, which it claims operates without fossil fuel-based heating.

Under the partnership, ACE will have a 51% ownership of the joint

venture to Tabono’s 49%.

Tabono co-founder Reon Barnard said that the business aimed to help South Africa retain valuable battery materials such as lithium and cobalt, which might otherwise be lost without recycling.

ACE’s vice-president for global strategy and business development Farid Ahmed said in July 2022 that the company was on track to produce refined lead in the US towards the end of 2023.

Some industry commentators say that the hydrometallurgical process for battery recycling is fraught with potential commercial and technical difficulties, making such projects unfeasible (see Batteries International issue no 121).

However, Ahmed said ACE expects production to start at the plant it is building in Texas around the fourth quarter of 2023.