Recycling light metals from end-of-life vehicle

Abstract

The amount of aluminum used in cars and light trucks is growing steadily. However, without new developments in aluminum recycling technologies, sheet from automotive aluminum could eventually flood all current markets for recycled aluminum. This article summarizes the use of light metals and different alloys in transportation applications, the current auto recycling system, and new developments in the sorting of light metals by the metal recycling industry and by Huron Valley Steel Corporation, the world's largest non-ferrous scrap sorter.

Recycling of automotive aluminum

“…For example, aluminum with a high silicon and manganese content will turn the scrap gray while zinc and copper combine to turn the scrap dark [23]. However, color sorting cannot be used to separate individual alloys within a family.…”

Component- and Alloy-Specific Modeling for Evaluating Aluminum Recycling Strategies for Vehicles

“…Thus far, the aluminum industry has been able to recycle a wide variety of alloys primarily by increasing the alloying element levels of the material to create foundry cast alloys, which have a higher tolerance for impurities but often require either additional alloying elements or the dilution of scrap with clean primary material to attain the necessary material qualities. 1,4,5 However, there are clear indications that blending and dilution are becoming less effective as the amount of the old scrap supply is increasing faster than demand for secondary casting applications that can absorb mixed scrap, resulting in a potential surplus of low-quality scrap. [6][7][8][9][10] To make use of all the aluminum scrap in the future and thus benefit from the potential energy and emission savings, it is therefore of utmost importance to identify alternative recycling strategies that are better suited to address the growing complexity of aluminum products.…”

“…The model used in that study allows for robust identification of the problem; however, its high aggregation level limits the evaluation of practical solutions because of the multitude of aluminum-containing components in automobiles and their highly complex alloys. Another group has developed a dynamic optimization model for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) recycling and demonstrated that product design by particle size reduction and liberation of material during shredding plays an important role in the composition and quality of recycling streams, 11,12 whereas others have investigated designs for recycling and optimization of refining and recycling processes, 1,2,13,14 Because automotive aluminum usage is expected to grow more rapidly in components consisting of wrought aluminum, 9,13,[15][16][17][18] it is important to identify components with wrought alloys or develop new ''recycling friendly'' alloys for these applications that could serve as intermediate reservoirs (sink alloys); such small-scale recycling practices have already begun. For example, Nissan collects and recycles aluminum wheels to construct suspension part and has developed pilot technology for bumper-to-bumper recycling.…”

Analysis of Aluminum Resource Supply Structure and Guarantee Degree in China Based on Sustainable Perspective

“…Of course, this wonderful methodology was also conducted to research other metals, such as copper [35][36][37][38][39][40], nickel [41], zinc [39,42,43], iron [26], lead [44,45], silver [46], phosphorus [47,48], and so on. In recent years, this method has been applied at a more micro level, and used to measure the recovery rate, recovery amount, and recovery potential of a certain kind of product within a region or a small area [49][50][51][52][53][54].…”