January 18, 2024: Taiwanese lead refiner ACME Metal Enterprise has installed its first modular lead battery recycling equipment supplied by ACE Green Recycling.

ACE’s VP for global strategy and business development Farid Ahmed told Batteries International on January 15 the first of three equipment delivery phases was completed last month.

The move follows initial testing of ACE’s technology in 2023 for the treatment of lead oxide drosses from ACME’s refinery in Keelung City.

Under the first delivery phase, ACE handed over equipment with a 2,400-tonne per annum recycling capacity. Completion of the third phase will expand this capacity to 20,000-tonne per annum, giving ACME the ability to produce around 12,000 tonnes of what it calls ‘GreenLead’ annually, which is worth over $25 million a year to the refiner, Ahmed said.

Over the 10-year duration of the contract, ACME will acquire the capacity to recycle more than 14 million scrap batteries, which ACE says will prevent the emission of nearly 120 million kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent, stop 18 million kg of solid waste from going into landfill and enable recycling of more than 14 million kg of plastics.

The lead recycled by ACME will be sold into markets in Taiwan and Japan including battery OEMs across Asia, ACE said.

ACE claims its technology replaces the smelting furnace, operates at room temperature, runs on electricity and has zero Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions (direct GHG emissions such as those made while running boilers and vehicles) and reduces solid waste by more than 85%.

ACE’s CEO Nishchay Chadha (pictured) said: “It is our goal as a battery recycling technology platform to provide all players in the ecosystem a way to meet not just their commercial goals but their environmental ones as well.”

ACE Green unveiled plans in 2022 to build and operate what it claimed would be an “emission-free” lead and lithium batteries recycling facility in Texas.