Abstract
It is very important to separate copper from the end of life vehicles for
recycling, because copper results in cracking of steel plate in a rolling. A lot of copper exists
in a car as the PVC(polyvinylchloride) coated copper wires that are bundled in the wire
harness, motors and so on. Approximately 85 % of copper in a car exists in the wire harness.
It was tried in this study that the copper was separated from a PVC coated copper wire by
rolling in order to examine the possibility of mechanical separation. Effect of the gap between
the rolls of the rolling machine on the separation of copper from the wire was investigated.
Furthermore, effect of the temperature of the wire on the separation was also examined. The
PVC coated wire was squeezed by passing through the rolling machine. The separation
occurred when the reduction ratio exceeded some value, because the PVC coating film was
torn. The average recovery ratio increased with the increase in the reduction ratio and the
number of rolling times. The average recovery ratio at the temperature of 0 °C was a
maximum and more than 90 %, while the maximum recovery ratio was 80 % when the wire
was hold at room temperature.. It decreased with the drop of temperature of the wire. The
single-conductor cables, which were not used in a car, were also examined in comparison
with the multi-conductor cable that was used in a car. In this case, the copper can be perfectly
separated from the PVC coated wire at one pass through the rolling machine, when the
reduction ratio is large and when the diameter of the PVC coated wire is small. It was found
that there was a possibility of disassembling a wire harness by the rolling machine.
Keywords - PVC coated wire, wire harness, rolling, mechanical separation, end of life
vehicle,