Recycled Lead: A "Circular Treasure" from Waste Lead-Acid Batteries-news-battery recycling machine,Jiangxi MingxinRecycled lead obtained from waste lead-acid batteries through standardized recycling, crushing and sorting, and smelting and refining is not only a core carrier for resource recycling but also plays an irreplaceable role in multiple fields, becoming an important support for the development of the green economy.
The most core application field of recycled lead is the reproduction of lead-acid batteries, accounting for more than 90%. Recycled lead after recovery and purification can be processed into lead alloy plates, which serve as the positive and negative electrode skeletons of new batteries. Its performance is equivalent to that of primary lead products, with lower production costs and less carbon emissions. In automotive start-stop systems, electric bicycle power supplies, communication base station backup power supplies, and energy storage fields, lead-acid batteries made of such recycled lead continue to ensure basic energy supply by virtue of their advantages of high safety and strong stability. In the circular economy industrial park in Xiangyang, Hubei Province, alloy lead plates processed from recycled lead are directly supplied to surrounding battery factories, forming a closed-loop industrial chain of "waste batteries - recycled lead - new batteries" with a monthly output value of up to 200 million yuan.
Recycled lead also shows unique value in special industrial and people's livelihood fields. Due to its characteristics of high density and corrosion resistance, recycled lead can be used to manufacture cable sheaths to enhance the protective performance of lines; in the medical and nuclear industries, it can be processed into radiation shielding materials to protect the human body from nuclear radiation damage. In addition, recycled lead can also be used as an alloy additive to improve the mechanical properties of steel and aluminum alloys, and is widely used in machinery manufacturing, shipbuilding industry and other fields.
More importantly, the application of recycled lead has significantly reduced resource consumption and environmental pressure. Compared with primary lead smelting, the unit energy consumption of recycled lead is reduced by more than 65%, carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by about 1.5 tons per ton of lead, and emissions of waste gas and solid waste are significantly reduced. Driven by the global "double carbon" goal, recycled lead has become the main force in lead supply. In 2025, the global output of recycled lead accounted for more than 80% of the total lead output, and China's output accounted for nearly 50%. This not only eases the pressure of primary lead resource shortage but also curbs the heavy metal pollution risk caused by the random disposal of waste lead-acid batteries.