What will happen to the various components of batteries?

Once in the furnace the batteries should break open, and mix with other charge components. The breakdown components will be.

Zinc: This metal will melt and volatise to zinc vapour. This vapour will pass through the off-take to be recovered as zinc metal in the lead splash condensing process.

Cadmium: This will be volatised and will pass with the zinc to the refinery. Here the cadmium will be recovered and sold as a product.

Mercury: This will volatise in the furnace and is removed from the off- gases in the lead splash condenser and gas scrubbing plant. This process will create a substance known as 'blue powder' slurry. The blue powder is then taken to the sinter plant. Here the Mercury is converted into calomel (mercurous chloride). The calomel is sent to a licensed chemical waste site. A small amount of mercury may condense with the furnace zinc in lead splash, this will end up with the cadmium product.

Lead: This metal will melt in the furnace and pass through the lead splash condenser. It will eventually be recovered from the product at the bottom of the furnace. This product will be sent to the refinery and then sold on the metals market.

Any other remaining product will enter the 'slag' pile. In conjunction with this campaign BZL is running a 'Slag Construction Project'. The 'slag' will be combined with concrete and bitumen and then used as a roadway material. The performance of the slag-containing roadway will be measured against control lengths of conventional concrete roadway. It is planned that this project will run until 2004, and if proven successful will have found a new market for large quantities of industry waste.