Scrap Preparation for Aluminum Alloy Sorting

Lightweight Materials in Electric Vehicles

“…One critical issue with recycling high-strength, heat-treatable aluminium alloys used on EVs is the wide range of the portion of unwanted elements such as iron and copper in the recycled metal chips [18,[49][50][51]. To solve this, different solutions have been proposed, including advancing the sorting techniques such as colour sorting and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, able to separate different kinds of aluminium alloys [52][53][54]; purifying the materials by fluxing [55] or segregation [56]; and solid-state recycling based on severe plastic deformation [15]. Solid-state recycling convents the aluminium chips directly into the bulky materials without melting, presenting high energy saving and high material utilization capabilities compared with the conventional remelting process [57].…”

Archives of Metallurgy and Materials

“…Therefore, Fe is considered to be harmful and its concentration is generally recommended to be reduced in order to prevent the formation this Al-Fe phase. However, the content of Fe tends to increase in aluminum alloys during recycling because it is difficult to eliminate [6,7]. Furthermore, the Fe content of Al alloys is generally designed to be more than 0.052 wt.% to prevent the dissolution of Fe atoms from steel-based molds into the Al alloy melt, e.g.…”