bergmen
Well-known member
Over 50 years working on vehicles (some years as a professional) and you are the first person I've ever heard say this.Not nonsense at all.Nonsense! Much of the lead used for battery manufacture anywhere is recycled and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's easier to make a high purity lead from "old" lead than it is from lead ore. The purity specification for any lead used for manufacture of electrolytic devices is very high and the is NO chemical difference of lead purified from recycled scrap and virgin lead from concentrate.
One manufacturer may have higher (or lower) material specifications and one physical design or chemical composition may be superior but it has nothing to do with whether the materials are recycled or not.
Japan uses NEW materials we use recycled.
I didn't say the lead mattered but the cells do and they fail.
Believe what you want, talk to someone (who's knowledgeable) in the battery manufacturing industry.
Recycled material can be weaker and I'll give you an example.
I was representing a company that made valves and fittings for pool pumps.
they used new raw material for all their plastic fittings.
Their competition used recycled/regrind plastic in their fittings, and their fitting threads were not holding and popping out of the pump volutes and causing leaks.
The ONLY difference was they used regrind/recycled plastic and the company I represented used NEW plastic
The ONLY difference between the Japanese batteries and the USA batteries is that the USA ones used recycled materials.
People (including me) are asking for any substantiation to this and without it this is nothing more than an opinion (and a bad one at that).
As a Senior Mechanical Engineer designing injection molded plastic parts for a living, "recycled" material is only used if and when it will not compromise the integrity of the part being molded. There are specific guidlelines for the use of regrind (percentage and type) published by the polymer sources and these are strictly adhered to. In our case it is a PC/ABS blend with an allowable 25% regrind content.
I specify virgin (new) material with an acceptable amount of regrind to the specifications. Parts using the specified amount of regrind as part of the composition are indistinguishable from parts molded from virgin. Some polymers cannot be molded using regrind since it compromises function, again part of the polymer formulators specification.
Your example of a "failure" of the fitting parts you mention has nothing to do with the fact that "regrind" was used. It may very well have been due to inappropriate use of "regrind" outside the specifications of the polymer manufacturer. As I indicate above, properly formulated plastics using the specified limit of regrind are indistinguishable from parts molded with virgin material. Otherwise we would not allow it and responsible manufacturers wouldn't either.
So this claim is bogus without authoritative substantiation. Prove it.
Dan
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