Abstract
Keywords:
Automobile shredder residue (ASR), End-of-life vehicle (ELV), Recycle rate, Thermal treatment, Fluff
Abstract
Automobile industries in Korea has focused on the handling of End of Vehicles (ELVs) with the establishment of proper recycling technologies to reduce the amount of final waste, and the possible recycling rate are recently posted to 95%, resulting in less than 5% of waste based on a new vehicle by the year of 2015 in the governmental regulation as other countries have done so. Management status of dismantling ELVs and analysis of waste streams in a shredding facility have been investigated. In 2003, about 3.2 million new vehicles were produced and half of them were exported from Korea. Currently 14 million cars are registered and 0.55 million ELVs are generated every year. About 184,000 of ELVs are exported and the remainders are collected junkyard facilities. These ELVs are transported to dismantlers to recover usable parts, and shipped to a shredding facility in compressed form. The automobile shredder residue (ASR), which is generated from the shredding process, generally consists of metals including both ferrous and non-ferrous forms, and shredder dusts (SDs) including fluff and dust. Most metallic streams are recycled and the SDs are disposed of by landfill. However, it is expected that landfill will not be allowed for the organic portion of the waste, while most of the composition of fluff in SD consists of organic combustibles. Therefore the SD is one of the objects to be treated further by any means to reduce and recycle as much as possible. Several technologies are under consideration including such conventional means as compaction, solidification and incineration. The recovery as a heat resource has also been considered using methods such as pyrolysis, gasification and injection to any thermal processes as fuels in addition to melting the final residue to produce slag that might be recycled to construction materials with ensuring the possible recycle rate of 95% in near future.