Implementation of circular economy of water in the automobile batteries recycling industry

abstract

Circular economy arises as an alternative to facilitate sustainable development in the industrial sector by enhancing water resource efficiency, reducing wastewater generation, and establishing closed-loop systems. This study presents two approaches to implement circular economy of water in the automobile batteries recycling industry. In these proposals, the key principles driving the circular economy model (reduce, reclaim, reuse, recycle, recover, and rethink) were considered, emphasizing the essential role of reduction, direct reuse, reclaiming, recycling, recovery and rethinking in achieving sustainable water management. Survey and measuring campaign were done to determine flowrates and characteristics of freshwater, wastewater, and treated wastewater stream. Then, water and pollutants mass balances were conducted. As a result, i) important reductions on freshwater consumption (69.5 %) and total water inputs (>66.0 %) in the industrial process can be achieved by implementing direct wastewater reuse; ii) direct wastewater reuse and wastewater recycle can be increased in 12 % and 18 %, respectively, thus contributing in reducing 6.2 % the wastewater generation; iii) batteries' electrolyte is the main source of wastewater pollutants; therefore, it is recommended to rethink and redesign the industrial process to extract batteries¿ electrolyte before they are processed; implementing this strategy will contribute in recovering 0.31 m3/1000 batteries/month (248 m3/month) of concentrated sulfuric acid, achieving zero disposal of wastewater, attenuating aquifer pollution by heavy metals and salts, and reducing wastewater treatment costs in 90 %, which represents savings greater than US$ 90,000.00/month or 1.15 million US dollars per year. © 2025 The Author.