Abstract
Keywords:Automotive Industry, Vehicle Materials, Recycling, End-Of-Life Vehicles, Post Shredder Technologies
The challenges for the automotive industry with regard to their products, design and production processes and recycling arise - amongst others - from current and future markets as well as legal requirements. In this regard, materials are of utmost significance since the choice of materials greatly influences, among other things, recyclability. Recycled materials from end-of-life vehicles are important resources for the production of secondary products and the generation of energy. This fact acquires vital implications since the prices of primary raw materials on world markets have seen a huge upsurge over the last few years. The legal requirements for the recycling of end-of-life vehicles derive from the European Directive on End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV). This directive also defines legal standards for recycling quotas of ELVs. In order to fulfil these quotas manual dismantling of plastic parts has been the strategy which was followed in the past. Component-specific requirements have been defined for vehicle design in order to get a recycling optimized product. However, manual dismantling offers no economical or ecological benefits in comparison to large scale sorting technologies which have witnessed very intensive development. Since these technologies are applied after the shredding process they are summarised under the term "post shredder technology" (PST). These technologies have reached a highly sophisticated level which allows a reorientation in the design for recycling of a car no longer considering manual dismantling of plastic components.
Are these technologies also suitable for current vehicles which will reach their end of life after 15 to 20 years?
To respond to this question, the BMW Group conducted a large-scale recycling trial with 501 BMW prototypes. The complete recycling process beginning from vehicle assessment up to material recycling and recovery was investigated. Therefore, an existing PST from the Scholz company in Germany representing the latest state-of-the-art technology was used for this trial. The plastics resulting from this process were separated by the Galloo Plastic S. A. facilities in France. The plastics passed through various modified sink-float facilities to obtain reusable plastic fractions. The results of the large-scale BMW trial have proven the suitability of PST as well as the plastic separation process with regard to compliance with the European legal obligations in the ELV Directive. It is possible to separate nearly completely metals directly and/or after further processing of metal-containing components. The plastics from the plasticrubber composite fractions were separated on an industrial scale to produce PP, PE, PS, ABS and talc-filled concentrates as secondary raw materials. In addition, plastics were recycled as reducing agents for the blast furnace. High heat value fractions were recovered, usable for energy recovery operations, e. g. in the cement industry. 2
Therefore, the PST established the basis for future recycling processes of ELVs. This is of particular importance since nowadays ELVs are a significant source of raw materials. This trend is predicted to continue due to rising raw material prices.