A Technical and Ecomonic Suervey of Technologies for Recycling Exhausted Lead-Acid Battery

In this paper the Italian situation related to the regulation, the collection and the quantity of the exhausted lead acid batteries was examined. In 1998 Italian lead production was 210,000 tons, 90,000 of which derived from the recycling industry; this quantity was equal to 33% of the national requirement that is around 270,000 tons yearly. The quantity of exhausted lead-acid batteries collected in 1999 was 166,500 tons, equal to 95% of the total collected. The technologies of recycling allowed us to recover almost all the materials employed for their manufacture; in addition to lead, polypropylene and PVC were also recovered. In this paper the commonly used technologies of lead recovery, based on two processes: the pyrometallurgical and the electrochemical were examined from a technological, economic and environmental impact point of view. Both processes showed advantages and disadvantages, even if a general evaluation was difficult. In a global evaluation, taking into consideration the materials to recycle, the relationship between costs and benefits and the environmental implications, the available data allowed us to identify the pyrometallurgical process as that with the highest efficiency.