Lead-Acid Battery Recycling Facilities with Inadequate Pollution Controls are Poisoning People in Africa: There are Ways to Do It Safely

 

     This post was spurred by a recent article co-published by Grist and The Examination which highlights the dangers to local residents of lead-acid battery recycling facilities operated by Indian companies in several countries in Africa that do not have pollution rules that cover the dangers. Yale Environment 360 published an article on the dangers of lead-acid battery recycling in November 2020. The UN also published a report on the problem in 2020. It has been a serious problem for a couple of decades in Africa. Even with pollution control in place in developed countries, there is still the issue of legacy pollution.

     It is no secret that lead is highly toxic, especially to children. When I was a teen, one time we gathered lead wheel weights from old tires, melted them with acetylene torches and poured them into molds to make sinkers for fishing. Luckily, I didn’t seem to have any lingering effects. Lead is the main contaminant from lead-acid batteries but battery acid, or sulfuric acid is also a contaminant of concern. The average car battery contains 11.5 kg (25.35 lbs) of lead. Indeed, it is the lead that makes batteries so heavy. The pollution from these recycling facilities occurs as air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution.

     This is not a new problem. Back in 2014, a U.S. company, Dallas, Texas-based RSR Corp., a U.S. operator of secondary lead smelters for battery recycling, complained to the Mexican government about the inadequacies of Mexico’s secondary lead smelting regulations since then about 1 billion pounds of used U.S. car batteries were exported to Mexico for recycling. In response, Mexican regulators did improve regulations, but those efforts did not go far enough. RPS said Mexico should adopt the U.S. EPA standard lead emissions limits of 0.2 mg/m3 and close loopholes, such as those that avoid monitoring the perimeters of the facilities. Thus, we can see that even the U.S. less than a decade ago was basically involved in ‘offshoring’ (in this case just exporting) pollution to countries without equivalent regulations.

     Pollution abatement at these secondary smelters includes treatment of exhaust gases and liquid effluents. Those who work at the plants and those who live very close to them are at the highest risk for exposure. There are means to prevent, assess, and reduce occupational lead exposure including air quality management, medical surveillance of employees, use of protective equipment, and good work hygiene.

     One of the main issues is that unabated lead-acid battery recycling is a profitable business in developing countries, where it prevents the batteries from being disposed of in landfills. Thus, recycling also prevents environmental contamination from disposal. Another issue is that these secondary smelters are often located in populated areas and expose close neighbors to significant pollution. Blacksmith Institute estimates that over 12 million people are affected by lead contamination from the processing of used lead acid batteries in the developing world, with South America, South Asia, and Africa being the most affected regions. These battery recycling operations in developing countries are often small-scale operations that are difficult to regulate. Tracking shipments of used lead-acid batteries from foreign exporters to developing world recycling plants is inadequate, making it difficult to trace batteries going to unauthorized or inadequate facilities. The UN Environment Program’s Basel Convention of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was implemented in 1992 and regulates the movement of hazardous wastes. The UN suggests voluntary suspension of spent battery exports.

     Some facilities in Africa have been successfully shut down due to documentable pollution harms. Hundreds of children were poisoned in Senegal in West Africa due to their proximity to a battery recycling plant. This happened in 2009. Yale Environment 360 reported that “18 children died in just three months from encephalopathy — toxic lead pollution from a battery recycling plant in a suburb of Dakar had damaged their brains.”

     Testing around operating facilities as well as around legacy facilities often reveals pollution exceeding regulatory limits. Clean-up of a legacy facility in Los Angeles County in California was expected in 2020 to cost $650 million. The project identified 7800 properties around the facility where the soil was contaminated with lead. Cleanup began in 2014 but in 2020 there were still 4600 properties remaining to be remediated.

     According to the International Lead Association, lead batteries are the world’s most recycled consumer product. Indeed, getting the significant “core charge” when replacing one’s spent battery ensures that the batteries will reach a recycling facility of some sort. Of course, lead recycling helps in that it reduces the need for lead mining. The problem is that many small businesses in developing countries know that lead-acid battery recycling can be profitable. My guess is that even with better regulations in place the chance for profit will encourage small companies to break the rules anyway, which is already happening. These operators can buy the batteries at a higher cost. Estimates are that up to half of all batteries end up in this “informal economy” that does not abide by pollution regulations. One major issue is how these operations function. Many will “break open battery cases, spilling acid and lead dust onto the ground, and smelt lead in open-air furnaces that spew toxic fumes and dust that contaminate surrounding neighborhoods.” A 2020 report by UNICEF and Pure Earth notes: “Around 1 in 3 children – up to 800 million globally – has blood lead levels at or above 5 micrograms per decilitre (µg/dL), a level that the World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have stated it requires global and regional interventions.” After the problem began to be addressed in India, some of the Indian companies moved operations to Africa, where regulations are inadequate. The degree of lead pollution in soils around these plants in Africa was found to be very high, astounding, in fact. A study focused near plants in Lagos, Nigeria, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Tema, Ghana found that average lead contamination in those soils was “23,200 parts per million — 1,000 times natural levels and roughly 100 times U.S. safety levels for soil. The soil was 2 percent lead, with peaks at 14 percent.” This is a problem in Southeast Asia as well. China began taking action after over 100 children were confirmed poisoned by a large recycling facility in 2010. Brazil was able to shut down 80% of its informal battery recyclers via economic incentives. The UNICEF/Pure Earth report suggested there may be as many as 90,000 of these informal recycling plants operating globally. The plants move around but the contamination remains so that there are many more contaminated sites than plants in operation.

     Experts have called these lead-acid battery recycling plants the most polluting industry in the world. The market for battery recycling in Africa is expected to reach $6 billion this decade. Indian battery recycling companies are now among the top polluters in Africa. In Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, it is thought that regulators are more or less ignoring calls from the local public to stop the pollution. The companies tend to say the pollution is not so bad and that they are complying with all regulations. However, continued soil testing shows that lead levels are still rising, often at over 50 times the U.S. EPA limit. These are from government-authorized companies. Pollution levels from unauthorized companies are likely magnitudes higher as the data in the previous paragraph shows. Even though many plants, both legal and illegal ones, have been shut down, the operations remain. Some are now calling for the Indian government to reign in Indian battery recycling companies in Africa. Just as the Union Carbide disaster that killed 15,000 people in Bhopal, India in 1984 was called a nefarious outsourcing of dangerous pollution to an area with inadequate regulation, so too is the pollution generated by Indian companies in Africa. The minimum requirement of basic filtration between the furnaces and the smoke stacks is often found to be lacking when investigated.

 

 

Lead-Acid Battery Regeneration

     One option is to regenerate spent batteries. Machines that regenerate old batteries are known as desulfators. Batteries become “sulfated” when lead-sulfur deposits form and harden as lead sulfate on the lead plates inside the battery. Battery regeneration uses heat to disulfate the battery, which takes a minimum of 48 hours. This is usually done with short bursts of heat since too much heat can cause the batteries to explode. There are even small battery desulphaters which anyone can buy. I found a small one on Temu for just $16. One might use these for, say, riding mower batteries that can become sulfated during storage in the off-season. Regeneration can prolong the life of the battery significantly. According to Salman Zafar, CEO Bio Energy Consult: “The advantage of battery regeneration over regular recycling is the reduced carbon footprint incurred by mitigating the collecting, packing, shipping and smelting of millions of tonnes of batteries and their cases. Most importantly, it takes about 25kWh of energy to remake a 15Kg, 12V 70Ah battery and just 2.1KWh to regenerate it electronically.”

 

Desulphators Used for Lead-Acid Battery Regeneration. Source: Wikipedia

Portable Desulfator. Source: Temu

Pollution-Free Recycling of Lead and Sulfur Via Vacuum Roasting

     A March 2023 paper in Green Energy and Resources found that there may be a chemical solution to this problem. The researchers found that using sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) as a low-cost, safe, and non-toxic reagent could prevent pollution and significantly reduce carbon emissions compared to smelting at higher temperatures. This new process could be done at about half the operating temperature of smelters, 500 degrees C, vs, 1000 degrees C. The conclusions section of the paper explains and summarizes:

 “The volatilization of lead dust and the release of sulfur oxides are high environmental risks of great concern in the pyrometallurgical recovery of spent LABs. In this study, vacuum roasting was employed to recover the high-risk elements Pb and S in spent LAB lead paste, with low-cost, safe, and non-toxic Na2CO3 as the sole reagent. Multi-component lead compounds, including PbSO4, PbO2, PbO, and Pb can be converted into high-value PbO products at 500 °C and 1 Pa by vacuum reaction with Na2CO3, and S was recovered in the form of Na2SO4·10H2O and Na2SO4. LCA revealed that for recycling 1.0 t of spent LABs, the vacuum roasting process can significantly reduce the carbon footprint (−2.1 × 103 kg CO2 eq), fine particulate matter formation (−6.1 kg PM2.5 eq), and potential toxicity (−1.1 × 103 kg 1,4-DCB), promoting global decarburization. Under the guidance of the twelve principles of green chemistry, this environmentally sound initiative eliminates the potential environmental risks of Pb and S, thus complying with the concept of green chemistry. The designed route can serve as an engineering guidance for the recycling of spent LABs.”

Some slides from the paper are shown below.

 

While I am uncertain about the upfront costs for such a system, the operating costs are bound to be much lower due to the lower operating temperature.  Certainly, the status quo on lead-acid battery recycling in developing countries is unacceptable and more action is needed now to fix this unnecessary problem.

 

References:

Indian companies are bringing one of the world’s most toxic industries to Africa. People are getting sick. Will Fitzgibbon, The Examination. Grist. December 4, 2023. Indian companies are bringing one of the world’s most toxic industries to Africa. People are getting sick. (msn.com)

Pollution-free recycling of lead and sulfur from spent lead-acid batteries via a facile vacuum roasting route. Mengmeng Wang, Quanyin Tan, Jiadong Yu, Dong Xia, Wei Zhang, Cong-Cong Zhang, Zhiyuan Zhang, Junxiong Wang, Kang Liu, and Jinhui Li. Green Energy and Resources. Volume 1, Issue 1, March 2023, 100002. Pollution-free recycling of lead and sulfur from spent lead-acid batteries via a facile vacuum roasting route - ScienceDirect

Getting the Lead Out: Why Battery Recycling Is a Global Health Hazard. Fred Pearce. Yale Environment 360. November 2, 2023. Getting the Lead Out: Why Battery Recycling Is a Global Health Hazard - Yale E360

RSR criticizes Mexican government over secondary lead smelting regulations. Recycling Today. July 1, 2014. RSR criticizes Mexican government over secondary lead smelting regulations - Recycling Today

Recycling of Lead-Acid Batteries in Developing Countries. Sudipta Chakraborty. Bio Energy Consult. April 10, 2023. Recycling of Lead-Acid Batteries in Developing Countries | BioEnergy Consult

Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes. December 9, 2011. Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes | UNEP - UN Environment Programme

Recycling of Lead-Acid Batteries: Perspectives. Salman Zafar. Bio Energy Consult. December 16, 2022. Recycling of Lead-Acid Batteries: Perspectives (bioenergyconsult.com)

Battery Regenerator. Wikipedia. Battery regenerator - Wikipedia

Lead Acid Battery Desulfator 12V 24V 36V 48V Battery Regenerator 2A Auto Pulse Desulfator. Temu. Lead Acid Battery Desulfator 12v 24v 36v 48v Battery Regenerator 2a Auto Pulse Desulfator - Temu

Auditor slams California for Exide cleanup delays, says cost could reach $650 million. Tony Barboza. Los Angeles Times. October 27, 2020. Auditor slams California for Exide cleanup delays - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

The toxic truth: Children’s exposure to lead pollution undermines a generation of future potential. UNICEF and Pure Earth. July 2020. The toxic truth | UNICEF