Management of used lead acid battery in China: Secondary lead industry progress, policies and problems

• The output and capacity tendency of recycled lead in China from 2001 to 2013.
• The current policy, law and regulation of recycled lead industry in China from 2009 to 2013 is summaried.
• The main outcome of the recycled lead industry in China after strict law supervison and government allowance support.
• The remaining problems including low secondary proportion, disordered recycling system, and high proportion of oudated process, still exist in China until now.

The amount of used lead acid batteries rises along with the rapid development of battery manufacture in China. The battery manufacture and recycling industry has developed sharply in these recent 5 years. The annual production of secondary lead from used lead acid batteries in China increased rapidly to 1.5 million tonnes (MT) in 2013, making china the world's largest secondary lead producer. Secondary lead enterprises are mainly located in the middle and eastern regions of China, with a legal production capacity of 3 MT/year. Environmental pollution problems began to happen frequently from 2009. After 2011, the government began to put in efforts to promote pollution control, eliminate outdated production capacity, support advanced production and technology innovation research, and has achieved remarkable results. However, the main existing problems are that the proportion of secondary lead production is only 30% of the total lead production, no formal recycling network has been established and the overall level of industrial technology and equipment is outdated. Compared with developed countries, this paper predicts that, secondary proportion will reach 44% in 2015 and 60% in 2028. Finally some countermeasures are given to the recycling mode and technology promotion.