Let’s Talk Batteries! Getting a Charge Out of Recycling Battery Wastewater Streams

Let’s Talk Batteries! Getting a charge out of recycling battery wastewater streams

Battery manufacturing continues to increase at a strong pace, driven by the necessity of batteries in most popular electronics. With an insatiable demand, there is continuous manufacturing and distribution of batteries and devices which use them. The supply chain is broad and deep, encompassing not only all phases of the manufacturing process, but also the transportation, integration, and disposal or recycling of used batteries.

With the increase in battery manufacturing and recycling comes an increase in hazardous wastewater. All battery manufacturers and recyclers, regardless of the location of operation, must solve the challenges of the wastewater streams.

In this two-part article series, we are peering into the tank of battery wastewater to bring clarity around how companies use Membrion solutions to recycle acidic metal wastewater. This first article is a basic road map of the battery wastewater world and its challenges. Check back soon for an article focused on how companies are creating sustainable water circularity using wastewater from battery recycling.

Welcome to Battery Wastewater 101.

We all have love-hate relationships with our cell phones, right? What about electric vehicles (EV), which are more common than bicycles now, even in school parking lots?

These products, and more, need batteries. The types of batteries in manufacturing are broadening every day. Battery demand is strong for military installations, EV batteries, lead batteries, extended duration energy storage from 4 to 12 hours, enhanced flooded batteries, and tubular batteries. There is also growing demand for valve-regulated absorbent glass mat (AGM) batteries, which provide backup power for data centers, utilities, and micro grids. This is not an exhaustive list.

With the frenetic demand for batteries and the uptick of outputs in battery manufacturing, challenges surfaced. We summarize these challenges broadly:

  • Resource scarcity
  • Environmental impact
  • Strains on the supply chain
  • Facility constraints
  • How to decarbonize the manufacturing processes

Manufacturers dealing with their battery wastewater streams hold the power to overcome every one of those challenges. Resource scarcity and supply chain issues are addressed through recycling—the recycling of batteries (about 95% of them can be recycled) and the recycling of the wastewater itself. Facility constraints can be resolved by customizable technologies and systems to recycle water. Abating negative environmental impact and achieving decarbonization occurs through effective wastewater recycling processes. It all creates a healthy circularity of resources.

Membrion understands the harsh industrial wastewater that battery manufacturing creates. Battery wastewater commonly occurs during the washing and cooling processes, generating an acidic wastewater which includes a regulated lithium compound. This wastewater poses environmental and health risks, requiring treatment and recycling methods.

Typically, facilities creating this wastewater must truck or incinerate the wastewater multiple times per week. Facilities often employ both trucking and incinerating wastewater management methods together. This wastewater poses environmental and health risks, requiring treatment and recycling methods.

Electro-ceramic desalination (ECD), using Membrion’s CeramIX® membrane solutions, is a proven method for managing these wastewater streams. Membrion treats the wastewater to facility specifications (internal or regulatory), while concentrating the contaminants by up to 50x.

Wastewater from battery manufacturing has various pollutants, including the toxic metals of lead, copper, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, mercury, nickel, and manganese. Nonconventional pollutants, including aluminum, iron, oil, and grease are also in this wastewater. Some pollutants include total suspended solids (TSS), pH variations, organic compounds, and gases and particulates are also present.

Membrion successfully executes wastewater solutions for battery manufacturing projects. One solution was for an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer. Once manufactured, EVs have a reduced carbon footprint over traditional automobiles with gas-powered engines. Unfortunately, EV manufacturing processes are carbon intensive, and the batteries may be the biggest culprit. A recent report outlines how making EV batteries can generate as much or more carbon emissions as producing all the other materials that go into making an EV.

Membrion’s patented CeramIX® electro-ceramic desalination membranes integrate into the EV wastewater treatment processes to treat and recover up to 98% of the acidic, highly ionic wastewater.

Membrion treated the wastewater streams for one EV manufacturer. Before Membrion, they were using ion exchange resin and trucking for their wastewater treatment train. The copper wastewater process previously involved treating the wastewater with resin, but installing Membrion’s ECD system created more effective and economically practical results.

Benefits shown from this EV pilot project were impressive. There were 95 fewer truck trips per year transporting contaminated wastewater, the mitigation of over 25 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), and the harnessing of other environmental social and governance (ESG) benefits.

Membrion now combines their novel ECD technology with a unique services approach that makes it easy for customers to harness the value and benefits of their solutions using water service agreements. Follow this link for more about how Membrion is redefining what is possible with water service agreements.

In another collaboration with a battery manufacturer, we address the challenge faced by a facility that generates multiple waste streams and mix in a holding tank. These streams include battery acid waste, flue gas scrubber stream, and wastewater recycle from their onsite treatment system. Membrion’s plan forward is to treat the combined waste stream from the holding tank and lessen the load on their existing water treatment. We expect the ECD system to meet sewer discharge limits in the dilute stream and the concentrate stream will flow to the facility’s onsite water treatment process. 

Regardless of the methods used for dealing with the hard industrial wastewaters, trucking, thermal, IX resin, or chemical coagulation, Membrion will increase efficiency in the treatment of wastewater. Battery manufacturers are always looking for the win that comes from saving money, achieving environmental compliance, and decarbonization. These manufacturers are expanding efforts to decarbonize EV batteries by recycling batteries. Plus, on a global scale, we need to capitalize on mining for chemicals used in battery manufacturing as part of the supply chain.

It is an expanding industry, and Membrion is here for that too.

We will dig deeper into the world of battery recycling in part two of this article series. Until then, contact us to talk more about our custom water service agreement for recycling acidic and metal wastewater.