Clean technologies for recycling A case study on automotive batteries in Brazil

Abstract

During the last decade product design were enlarged to cope with environmental requirements from materials selection to final assembly and disassembly for recycling. DFE, DFR, DFD (Design for Environment, Design for recycling and Design for Disassembly) are new designing approaches that incorporate the environment issues from the beginning of a product development. But recycling does not intrinsically prevent environmental impacts. For instance, regarding toxic materials such as heavy metals, lead, mercury, chrome and cadmium, new and clean technologies and sound recycling processes management are required avoiding extra environmental impacts. This is exactly the case or lead car batteries that claims for cleaner recycling processes and for technological innovation. In this way new technological trails leading to more efficient batteries, are suppose to have a great impact on recycling process in mediumterm and even short-term. Car batteries are recycled all over the world at different rates such at 90 % in European Union and at 50 % in less developed countries. In Brazil we do not have official data on batteries recycling but a case study made at CETEM by V. Trouche(1) under my supervision got to an estimated rate on an interval from 65 to 80 %. The main propose of this article is to present some results of this case study, highlighting the best environmental practices and giving additionally some insights on environmental and economical aspects of car batteries recycling in Brazil. This case study was conducted not only for its importance for the Brazilian market, but also for clean technologies and sound recycling process management required in order to avoid extra environmental impacts from lead car batteries discharge.