Recytec recycling process

Figure 44. Material balance and flowsheet diagramm for the Recytec Recycling Process...

An interesting recycling process has been developed the Recytec company in Switzerland in cooperation with ETH in Zurich (25). It combines an initial thermal treatment with a subsequent electrochemical process to recover separated metal values from spent household batteries. A virtue of the process is that it accepts unsorted mixtures of just about all types of batteries likely to be found in household wastes, and it can probably tolerate admixtures of some non-battery wastes as well. Although it is not designed to handle lead-acid batteries, it may well be capable of doing so after some process modifications. 

In 1991 the world s first commercial plant for battery recycling for unsorted household batteries, which uses the Recytec Battery Recycling Process, started operation in Aclens, Switzerland. The technology applies a thermo-mechanical and chemical-electrochemical separation process for recovering valuable materials from unsorted household battery waste. It efficiently refines waste components to raw materials that can be recycled into the industry. 

The Recytec process is quite complicated and may need to be modified before its acceptance as a viable process for the plant scale reading of spent batteries. When plant scale data become available it will be possible to make the necessary assessments in terms of both plant economics and recycling efficiencies. 

In Figure 44 an overall mass balance based on production-scale illustrates the flow of the materials recovered in the process [61]. Important steps of the overall Recytec Process for battery recycling are as follows pyrolysis and gas treatment (condensation), shredding and washing, magnetic-inductive separation and electrolysis of the non-ferrous scrap and magnetic separation followed by the electrolysis of manganese dioxide and zinc. 

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