By: Ava H.
Recently I had the chance to interview GoRecycle, a recycling center specializing in recycling batteries to make safe and pure fertilizer. GoRecycle strives to make battery recycling affordable and effective.
Considering our magazine recently wrote an article about the environmental problems with common battery disposal, it’s so great to talk with you, valuing the importance of proper battery recycling! Can you give some background as to what the mission behind Go Recycle USA is?
As a metallurgical engineer, Dr. Scott Volner began his career mining large tonnages of very low grade minerals and discovered that so many of our society's wastes contain higher concentrations of metals than we mine--such as alkaline batteries! Tackling problems like this is the new frontier in supplying society with the raw materials it needs
The technologies for extracting metals from the ground have evolved over the last several thousand years--since the dawn of civilization. Recovering metals from industrial wastes is more complicated and will require new techniques to be developed. But we can't wait hundreds of years to solve this looming crisis. Dr. Volner founded Catalytic Innovations in hopes of leading the way in this battle.
How are you able to turn batteries into fertilizer?
The alkaline battery recycling process begins by crushing the batteries into quarter inch pieces using a hammer mill. The Hammermill discharge drops onto a belt where the steel is removed via a cross belt magnet conveyor system. The steel-free material is then digested with acid to dissolve the zinc and manganese. This zinc and manganese-laden solution is then filtered away from the inert solids for downstream separation and purification.
The filter cake residue containing the inert solids is all that is discarded. This contains the paper and plastic from the battery as well as the carbon electrode material and makes up about 10% of the total weight of the battery. The acid digestion is very efficient and can recover 95% of the zinc and manganese.
The recovered solution of zinc and manganese is then separated to make a pure zinc solution and a pure manganese solution. These can then be spray dried to produce pure zinc sulfate or pure manganese sulfate that can be used in agriculture as a fertilizer or converted to their pure metals for reuse in batteries.
Do you think this practice is realistic to become a common practice nationwide? Why or why not?
Fortunately, our services are available nationwide already, through our GoRecycle shipping kits! Unfortunately, there are so many greenwashed companies out there that are redirecting countless batteries from our true solution to their sham recycling.
Do you think recycling is a practical environmental solution? Why or why not?
Recycling is a practical solution in the cases where it is economical and legitimate. For a lot of materials, however, it is very difficult and they eventually wind up overseas and dumped in the ocean or buried somewhere within the US after the brokers have milked every cent out of transporting them. That is why we really strive to skip the broker and collect batteries straight from the consumer and recycle them from our own facility.
What are the biggest challenges when practicing battery recycling?
There is a mistrust amongst consumers regarding recycling, and often for good reason. Many recyclers in the industry are doing sham recycling or simply moving things across borders and burying them. Due to our process being complicated and quite contrary to common knowledge, we have a great deal of work to do in terms of educating people before they become customers.
This has been demonstrated in our difficulty finding a way to finance a 10-fold expansion that was set to take place this year. The other challenge is getting the word out that we have a REAL solution for the alkaline battery waste problem!
Where do you see Go Recycle going in the next 5-10 years?
We are tirelessly working to finance a 10-fold expansion of our current facility, as our tanks are full, and our plant is bursting at the seams! Provided that we can acquire investors, we hope in 10 years we will process most of the alkaline batteries collected in the US and Canada as well as importing those collected in Europe and across the globe! We are currently working on an extraction/recycling process for lithium ion and primary lithium batteries and should have a full-scale production plant for those chemistries.