2015-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2015 Volume 10: Mineral & Secondary Battery

Editors:Kongoli F, Silva AC, Arol AI, Kumar V, Aifantis K
Publisher:Flogen Star OUTREACH
Publication Year:2015
Pages:340 pages
ISBN:978-1-987820-33-1
ISSN:2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series)
CD-SIPS2015_Volume
< CD shopping page

    The Italian Way to the Collection and Recycling of Lead Acid Accumulators

    Alessandro Pescetelli1; Cosmo Sancilio2; Antonino Tine2;
    1TEXECO CONSULTING, Rome, Italy; 2TEXECO CONSULTING SAS, Roma, Italy;
    Type of Paper: Regular
    Id Paper: 129
    Topic: 14

    Abstract:

    The Italian legislation anticipated the implementation of the guide lines of the European Directive 91/157 through a law (issued in 1988) ruling waste management and specifically scrapped lead-acid accumulators collection and recycling and providing one single, mandatory, non-profit Consortium with members of the Board of Directors representing all of the categories of operators taking part to the life-cycle of the batteries (batteries producers or importers, smelters operators, retailers, collectors, car-repair shops, etc). The Consortium became fully operating in 1991, and, as a result, the collection rate ramped up immediately (1992) to 120 kt/year, and, throughout the 90s and 2000s increased up to 200 kt/year, achieving one of the highest recovery efficiency in Europe, regardless of any lead price fluctuations. <br />The key factors of success were: 1) responsibility and control shared among all of the categories taking part to the life-cycle of the batteries 2) viability and efficiency of the financial scheme, granting to all categories adequate profitability 3) viability of the centralized control system, ensuring effective management of collection and recycling operation as a whole.<br />The paper gives also details of two original Information Systems that are conditional to design and master the collection and recycling network. The technical project of the collection network was supported by an original software developed by Texeco Engineering srl (now Texeco Consulting) with the scope of calculating the potential flow of scrap batteries arising from the various geographical areas of the Italian territory, together with relevant forecast of collection cost. Another software was implemented by the Consortium for processing all data transferred by collectors, so to master and optimize handling, storage, and transfer of collected scrap batteries to smelters. Such Information system was capable of monitoring a network consisting of about 80 collectors and 7 smelters, with a yearly output of 150-190,000 tpy of scrap batteries.

    Keywords:

    Industry; Modeling; Recycling; SecondaryBattery; Sustainability;

    References:

    [1] “Development and Outlook for Chinese Lead” , Zhang Weiqian (Antaike Ltd), ILZDA Conference 2014, New Delhi
    [2] “Lead in China, Now and in the Future”, by Claire Hassal (HCR Metals), 6th World Lead Conference, Sofia, 2014
    [3] “The Extractive Metallurgy of Lead”, R.J. Sinclair, The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM), 2009
    [4] “ Lead/Acid Batteries”, A. Pescetelli, E. Paolucci and A. Tinè (Texeco srl), from “Used Battery Collection and Recycling” by G. Pistoia, J.-P. Wiaux and S.P. Wolsky (Editors), 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.
    [5] “Cobat: la soluzione Italiana al problema della raccolta e smaltimento delle batterie al piombo esauste”, C. Sancilio, published in “Rifiuti- Bollettino di informazione normativa n.12, (8-9/ 1995)”
    [6] “Cobat Activity Evolution at the Service of Major users and Private Citizens” C.Sancilio, 2nd International Battery Recycling Congress , Cannes 1996
    [7] ”Cobat Environmental Report 2000”
    [8] “Cobat Report, 2004”

    Full Text:

    Click here to access the Full Text

    Cite this article as:

    Pescetelli A, Sancilio C, Tine A. The Italian Way to the Collection and Recycling of Lead Acid Accumulators. In: Kongoli F, Silva AC, Arol AI, Kumar V, Aifantis K, editors. Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit SIPS 2015 Volume 10: Mineral & Secondary Battery. Volume 10. Montreal(Canada): FLOGEN Star Outreach. 2015. p. 229-242.