Trillions of batteries of all types and sizes are used in United States every year. The other fact to know here is that millions of batteries are disposed of in the United States every year. These batteries contain a range of dangerous materials, including heavy metals and acids. They can pose serious threats to the environment if not discarded properly. Read the article below to know steps to dispose of batteries.
Methods to Dispose of Batteries
1.) Give to Retailer to Dispose of Batteries
Vehicle batteries when get old and don’t work properly, you can give it back to the retailer. The retailer sends it to the hammer mill where they are separated into pieces. These pieces are then placed on a conveyor belt, where the heavy materials like lead fall to the bottom. At this point, the plastic pieces are taken away and the heavy metals remain at the bottom. From here each of them goes into a different recycling stage.
Plastic
Plastic pieces are first washed then dried and are melted together into an almost liquid state. The liquid plastic is put through a molding machine that produces small plastic boxes of a constant size. The boxes are put back into the manufacturing of the battery cases and the process starts again.
Lead
Lead parts are first cleaned and heated inside smelting boilers. The melted lead is then emptied into brick molds. The scums soar to the top of the liquid lead in the brick molds. These scums are removed away and the bricks are left to cool. Now, these bricks are removed from the molds and are given to battery manufacturers. These manufacturers used in the making of new batteries.
Sulfuric Acid
The sulfuric acid is deactivated with an engineering compound like the household baking soda. Deactivation turns the acid into water. This water is then cleaned, treated and tested in the water treatment plant to be ensured that it is properly cleaned. The acid is handled and changed to sodium sulfate, an unscented white powder that’s an integral part of the laundry detergent, textile and glass industry.
2.) Recycle Drop Box to Dispose of Batteries
Recycle drop box are located in every street, departmental stores and in the market. You can drop your old watch, remote, wall clock and radio battery in these drop box. These devices which we have discussed mostly contain the lithium batteries. The metals of the lithium batteries are taken out using a hammer depending on size of the battery. These metals are then immersed in caustic water. This solution defuses the electrolytes, resulting in the recovery of non-ferrous and ferrous metals. The scrap metal recovered from it is then sold to metal recyclers to avail the cost of recycling. The carbon that is recovered is dropped into sheets of carbon block. The lithium present in the solution is transformed to a fine white powder lithium carbonate. It also provides lithium for the making of sulfur dioxide batteries.
3.) Dump in Garbage box to Dispose of Batteries
You can also dispose batteries in the garbage box. Not all batteries can be disposed in these garbage boxes, only the alkaline batteries can be disposed. These alkaline batteries are then removed from the garbage box by garbage cleaner and send to the recycling unit. Alkaline batteries are reused in a specialized room temperature. These batteries go through the mechanical split-up process where the components of the battery are separated into end products. These end products are zinc, manganese and brass concentrates. Later on all these products are put back into the further manufacturing unit for reuse in the new products to lower the cost of the recycling process. They can be recycled 100%.
4.) Visit Government Organizations to Dispose of Batteries
Many government organizations are working in this field only. They have scientists, doctors, researchers that deal with this only. They work daily on how efficiently we can dispose of batteries. They use to work on Eco-friendly techniques, so that the environment is not affected. You can contact them any time and dispose of batteries.
