How can salvaging recover useful parts from car batteries?

Salvaging useful parts from car batteries—specifically lead-acid batteries—is a highly efficient process due to the metal's high degree of salvageability at low melting temperatures. The recycling process generally involves the following steps:1

• Collection and Sorting: Used batteries are collected through formal channels, such as dealer take-back systems, to ensure they are sent to registered, environmentally regulated facilities.2
• Treatment and Separation: The battery scrap is treated and separated into its constituent parts.3
• Smelting: The lead-containing fractions are processed in furnaces, such as reverberatory or blast furnaces, where the material is melted. During this stage, impurities are removed.3
• Refining and Alloying: The resulting lead bullion is refined and alloyed to create commercial products. For example, battery plates are often smelted to produce antimonial lead (a lead-antimony alloy) for the manufacture of new batteries, or to recover pure lead and antimony as separate materials.34

This secondary lead is a vital resource, accounting for nearly half of the total refined lead output, and is largely resold to battery manufacturers to create new units.3