These cunning dealers know something. Therefore, they buy up batteries and will probably resell them for more.
The most important resource in batteries is lead. What happens if you take it apart and melt the lead? At the same time, calculate the benefits. How significant is it and is there any?
For this case, I took a very old battery, which I forgot about. It was littered with old junk in the garage and found while cleaning.
Attention
The author of this article uses personal protective equipment. Such as gloves, goggles, overalls, and a respirator. To protect the body and respiratory system. I do not recommend repeating these steps. I will count the benefits for you.
First of all, I decided to drain the acid. But to her surprise, she was not there. Has disappeared somewhere... In any case, the content must be neutralized. For this I take soda. I make a water solution and fill it.
The neutralization process took about an hour. Gas bubbles from the reaction of soda and acid continuously evolved for about an hour.
This aqueous solution was later poured into a basin and again neutralized with soda. The next step is to try to open the battery and loosen the lead plates. I did it with ease. At the same time, I did not use a sledgehammer or grinder to break the strong body. Moreover, all these methods are very dirty and labor-intensive. Scroll through the gallery.
The renovator helped me in this. Calmly, without unnecessary noise. Without splashing from the rotating discs, I opened the upper part of the battery case in 15 minutes. Here is such a cool assistant for me. You can look at the characteristics of the miracle instrument:
The next step is to remove the lead plates. To my surprise, there are practically none. They are completely dissolved in the so-called "Active mass" (coating).
What to do? I decided to try to melt all this mass... Maybe something worthwhile will come out. But here was my mistake. But more on that later.
I put all this mass in a tank and began to heat it on an infrared stove. The process took a long time. The fumes were very offensive, since the wind blew away the gases. Tired of waiting... The process dragged on for half an hour, but there was no result. I decided to lay out the contents of the heated mass.
Due to the fact that I put pure lead in the tank, with its oxides, the heating did not really pass. I decided to separate the pure lead from the plaster again. When shifting and shaking off, the impression was that there was less pure metal.
The subsequent heating was more fun ...
But there was practically no lead... It turned out to be less than a kilogram.
What happened? Where is the pure lead?
The battery has been in acid for a long time without recharging. Most of the pure lead is converted into an oxide state. When I heated all this mass, I only made the situation worse. Some of the solid lead was smeared in this oxide. Therefore, there was practically nothing at the exit. Lead can only be removed from there chemically.
I was in the red. Wasted time, one bottle of gas was spent - 60 rubles. And also lost the battery that could be returned for 600 rubles...
So much for science, do not repeat my actions and you will be in the black. Hopefully the bitter experience deserves your likes! Thank you.