Construction Commences on WA’s First Lead Acid Battery Recycling Facility
FTR Operation Pty Ltd, trading as Nexus Recycling have commenced construction of Western Australia’s first used lead acid battery recycling facility. The reprocessing plant is being built at 8-10 Winchester Rd, Bibra Lake and is expected to be commissioned in May 2021. The Nexus operation will have a licensed capacity to process approximately 30,000 tpa with an installed processing capacity in excess of 50,000 tpa. Both of which exceed the estimated 16,000 – 20,000 MT of used lead acid batteries generated each year in WA.
The recycling process requires the breaking down of used automotive batteries to extract and recover their component parts, for re-use.
This involves:
- Crushing where batteries are physically broken down.
- Primary separation of battery components which results in separation of metallic lead, lead paste and plastics.
- Secondary separation of plastic battery components and immobilisation of plastic separator waste.
- Production and packaging of recycled products and waste materials, and treatment of generated wastewater.
This is a welcome and exciting development for the WA battery recycling industry as it should eliminate the need and cost associated with freighting batteries to the Eastern State recyclers and reduce the environmental impact due to the long distance transport.
Proving Up the Closed Loop Battery Collection System
Upon learning of Nexus’ plans, Battery Rescue initiated discussions with their management regarding their ability and willingness to accept batteries delivered directly to their reprocessing plant in our Battery Transport & Storage (BTS) Container. The Nexus facility will have the necessary equipment to accommodate the auto unloading of batteries from our BTS Containers and they have agreed to trial the batteries delivered in our BTS Containers.
This is an exciting development for Battery Rescue, which upon successful completion of the trial and negotiation of acceptable terms with Nexus, will finally enable us to prove up our “closed loop” battery collection system. It also ensures that acid leakages are captured and properly recycled and not allowed to escape into the environment. Battery electrolyte (acid) contains relatively high levels of entrained lead and other toxic heavy metals.
For several years Battery Rescue has lobbied without success, the eastern state reprocessors, Renewed Metal Technology and Hydromet to accept batteries delivered in our BTS Containers. Battery Rescue is looking forward to demonstrating our safer, more convenient system, while reducing the environmental impact, of used batteries destined for recycling.
Battery Rescue believes that the use of returnable containers as part of a closed loop container pool is the future of battery recycling both here in Australia and globally.
