The lead-acid battery industry in China: outlook for production and recycling

Abstract

In 2013, more than four million (metric) tons (MT) of refined lead went into batteries in China, and 1.5 MT of scrap lead recycled from these batteries was reused in other secondary materials. The use of start-light-ignition (SLI), traction and energy storage batteries has spread in China in recent decades, with their proportions being 25.6%, 47.2% and 27.2%, respectively, in 2012. The total production of these batteries increased from 296,000 kVAh in 2001 to 205.23 MkVAh in 2013, with manufacturing located mainly in the middle and eastern provinces of the country. In this paper, we find that the market share of SLI batteries will decrease slightly, the share of traction batteries will continuously increase with the emergence of clean energy vehicles, and that of energy storage batteries will increase with the development of the wind energy and photovoltaic industries. Accounting for lead consumption in the main application industries, and the total social possession, it is calculated that used lead batteries could generate 2.4 MT of scrap lead in 2014, which is much higher than the 1.5 MT that was recycled in 2013. Thus, the current recycling rate is too low. It is suggested that while building large-scale recycling plants, small-scale plants should be banned or merged.