The battery treatment plant works with a two-stage thermal process to recover valuable raw materials and return them to the industrial cycle.
Mercury
Button cells may contain mercury and therefore require special treatment. All Europe countries consider this type of battery as hazardous waste requiring a transboundary waste permit according to the Basel Convention in order to transport the waste to the country of the final treatment facility.
The treatment process
These mercury containing batteries are collected by local and national authorities and then sent to BATREC for recycling in accordance with current environmental legislation. The mercury contained in the batteries vaporizes during the first processing step by pyrolysis between 700 and 800°C. It will then be recovered and processed in our facility.
Focus on the process
Here is the flowsheet of our battery recycling unit in Switzerland including 3 processes including the thermal treatment step, the wet off-gas treatment process and finally the dry off-gas treatment step.
