Model VTR -Vacuum Thermal Recycling
A battery is a electrochemical unit, usually consisting of two metals or metal components with different physical properties. The less precious metal has a lower melting point and particular higher vapour pressure, which enables us to extract it by distillation. To prevent emissions from the start, we took over experience from vacuum metallurgical technologies. The basic principle is, to separate the treatment space hermetically from the environment and therefore avoid any contact with hazardous metal gases and fumes.
Accumulators are filled batch wise into steel containers. These containers are loaded to the vacuum furnace, which is sealed and evacuated. After leakage test, the batteries are heated by induction incrementally. Water, hydrocarbons and the less precious metals are evaporated in different phases of the process. These superheated gases are separated and re-condensed within the vacuum system.
The purity of distillated metals is reflecting the sorting quality of treated batteries. Hence, quality control is mandatory by sorting each batch of battery cells entering this treatment step.