Recycling of Composite Materials & Cleaning the Extreme

The Environment Business Unit of chemical park operator Currenta (Germany) will again showcase its wide range of disposal solutions for hazardous waste and give insights into new recycling methods at this year's RWM. The rotary kilns with their mature flue gas purification process, for example, are also highly suitable for pretreating composite materials, which generally cannot be recycled effectively using mechanical technologies. Tests on used lithium-ion batteries have shown that these can also be thermally pretreated with a high level of efficiency. The batteries burst in the rotary kiln and the organic substances burn off, leaving the battery housing, from which metals such as cobalt, copper, aluminum and steel can be safely recovered. Currenta has already treated more than 1,000 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries for the German company Accurec Recycling GmbH (Mülheim). Now the Leverkusen-based company is looking for new partners in the United Kingdom. With such a recycling partnership, it is possible to recover more than 99 percent of metals in composite materials such as batteries.

Additionally to the battery sector, Currenta offers a similar service for the automotive supplier industry, thermally pretreating hundreds of used engine parts containing electronic control elements each year. The metals, which are separated from the organic matter, can be recycled. And the heat energy of the thermal process is used to produce steam for other production processes.

Further services available to Currenta customers are the purification of contaminated sulphuric acid, the distillation of specific solvents and the recovery of iodine from iodine-bearing hazardous waste.