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fter its useful life is over, the typical automobile is stripped of usable components, crushed and

the shredded vehicle is recycled and the

DESIGN FOR RECYCLING

rest - auto shredder residue - is landfilled. But rather than resting on their laurels, auto manufacturers and

initiatives aimed at increasing the re-

FOR RECYCLING No longer content to merely crush and shred cars, auto manufacturers and recyclers are aligning to make more of every automobile recoverable.

By Anne Claire Broughton

cycling rate to as much as 95 percent. The most prominent of these initia-

tives is the recently-established Vehicle Recycling Development Center, High- land Park, Mich. The VRDC is a project of the Big Three automakers’ Vehicle Recycling Partnership, in collaboration with the Automotive Recyclers’ Asso- ciation, Fairfax, Va., and the American Plastics Council, Washington.

At the center, dismantlers from the ARAandengineersfromChryslerCorp., General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are dismantling cars and catalogu- ing their plastics content, as well as researching design changes to make cars more easily dismantled and recycled.

After the VRDC disassembles ve- hicles that are provided by Ford, GM and Chrysler, recovered parts are sold to ARA members who can retail them as recycled parts to the general public or to auto repair facilities.

“One priority project is total fluid rec- lamation, which means removing as much automotive fluid as possible,” says Ken Schram, the representative ARA dismantler at the VRDC. ‘We want to get as much of the fluids out as we can.”

90 I February 1994 / RECYCLING TODAY

F

Automobiles are now manufactured with a n increasing concern fo r easier dismantling and increased recycling.

Another central focus of the VRDC, says Schram, is analyzing the material content of each vehicle processed, with the most attention paid to the plastic content,since metals arealreadywidely recycled.

Working with Big Three engineers responsible for future auto design, says Schram, the VRDC will make recom- mendations to the VRP about optimal design changes. VRDC GOALS. The stated goals of the VRDC are to develop guidelines to en- hance future automobile recyclability; promote the increased use of recyclable and recycled material in vehicle design; and bring together government, uni- versity and industry groups to share information and demonstrate state-of- the-art recycling know-how.

All of this boils down to a vision of a totally recyclable car. Eventually, say those involved in the project, cars will be sent to a dismantler to be stripped completely of all usable components and non-metallic parts, includingupholstery, seat foam, rubber door fascia, and ev- erything else, leaving a clean metal

frame that can be sold at a higher price to an auto shredder.

Markets for all these nonmetallic materials will have to be well estab- lished, with a national computer data- base helping dismantlers market com- ponents. Almost nothing will be landfilled, and shredders will no longer generate fluff.

Although changes in automotive de- sign can take time, the goal ofthe VRDC is to get as many as possible of the its findings implemented in the shortest possible time, according to Claudia D m c e a u , technical research manager of plastics at Ford and eo-chair of the VRP’s disassembly group.

“As soon as we find something out, we’re going to get the right design en- gineers from the companies in here so they can see what we’ve learned and consider it for the design of future ve- hicles,” she says. “The project may be short term, or it might be longer term, depending on how the research goes. Part of our standard procedures will be writing things up and seeing that the technology is transferred.”

The VRDC will make recommenda- tions to plastics and automobile manu- facturers about standardizing the types of plastics found in cars and limiting the different types of polymers to simplify recycling. They will also make recom- mendations about designing cars that are easier to dismantle, featuring fewer bolts and possibly more use of quick fasteners like Velcro.

Developing proper equipment is an important step in facilitating the dis- mantlingprocess.To this end, the VRDC is working with various equipment manufacturers, which have done their own research on the kind of machinery required to process the totally recy- clable car.

Identifymg characteristics of equip- ment users was the first step, according to Ken Kneen, president of Al-jon, Ottumwa, Iowa. The company found there was a three-tiered system for pro- cessing cars.

“The first is the large metropolitan car processing yard that might generate 100 or 120 cars per day by itself,” he explains. “That facility can afford a large

RECYCLING TODAY / February 1994 / 91

DESIGN FOR RECYCLING

disassembly line with all the bells and buzzers. The next is the smaller disassembler who might go through four or five cars a day, and the third tier is the custom crusher that goes Erom yard to yard processing cars.”

What is needed is a machine that can operateinall three environments, b e e n adds. This is a challenge since the mobile crusher can only accommodate a limited amount of equipment. A disassembly line proves effective for the larger facili- ties, he adds, although it, by necessity, is complicated.

‘When Henry Ford revolutionized the auto industry with the assembly line, he was just dealing with the Model A Ford, where every wheel and seat are the same,” b e e n explains. “We have to be able to dismantle every model from ev- ery manifacturer.” COMPONENT REUSE. Another task facing auto recyclers is the removal and reuse of auto components before ve- hiclesareshredded. Through theVRDC,

auto manufacturers are working closely with dismantlers to see that more com- ponents are reused. This represents a change in philosophy on the part of auto makers, according to Don Rouse, direc- tor of field services, ARA.

“It wasn’t so many years ago that the original equipment manufacturers were taking any excess vehicles (test cars, etc), and simply crushing and shred- ding them,” says Rouse. “There wasn’t any recognition that you should recycle parts or components. But they are now trying to design cars to make it easier to recycle them. There has also been a change in philosophy so now it is accept- able to reuse a component.”

There is a substantial and growing market for reusable automotive com- ponents such as engines and transmis- sions, according to Rouse, which can either be reused as they are or remanufactured. This accompanies a greater acceptance of the legitimacy of such components.

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Circle 122 on reader service card

“Ford’s service department sells both new and remanufactured parts, which can be as much as 50 percent cheaper,” he explains. “They will now place a war- ranty on those parts like they do new ones. These changes in philosophy are significant .”

The heightened emphasis onrecycling in recent years was likely the impetus for such changes, according to Rouse. “It became a problem for car makers to say it’s okay to recycle cars by grinding them up, but at the same time not allow parts to be reused. You can get two or three uses out of anything, and it creates an economic advantage.”

Domestic auto manufacturers have been affiliated with various re-manufac- turers for some time, he adds, but they are now getting more deeply involved, and are establishing authorized remanufacturing facilities to do the remanufacturing for them, so these parts are coming into service facilities along with new parts.

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“The parts that our industry sells are frequently sold in collision repair shops, and the insurance companies are the ones that pay the bills. Insur- ance companies refer to these parts as ‘like kind quality’ ... The market for LKQ is expanding, as there is now more information on where those parts are available.”

Being able to quickly locate LKQ parts is key to their widespread use, says Rouse. That information is made available by several new computer da- tabases which allow dismantlers to in- ventorypartsand to communicatewith one another.

“Now people from one end of the country to the other can buy and sell parts. If the part isn’t too big, you can have it shipped UPS,” he adds. “Some- one in anotherstate may need it. With the computer database, you can match up parts and buyers.’’

Until recently, these components were not inventoried and were harder

to lochte, so auto repair shops could not rely on them. Now, the more wide- spread use of LKQ parts is already increasing the percentage of each auto- mobile that can be reused and recycled.

Only 10 to 15 percent of the industry now has access to this computer data- base service, by Rouse’s estimate. But this number is expanding.

“The industry is being revolutionized by computers,” says Rouse. “Not only can you inventory all your parts on the computer, you can also look up in the database and see what all the parts should be on the car. If the car needs a transmission, you can call up all the possible transmissions for that car, then sort the one that matches what you’ve got, see if it’s in stock, how many miles on it, etc. If you haven’t got it in stock, you can take the part number, find out who does have it in stock and have it shipped to you.” AUTO PLASTICS.TheVRDC’sresearch on plastics is of critical importance to

designing a more recyclable car, accord- ing to Rouse. From dismantlers’ per- spective, having the VRDC catalogue the various types of plastic used in vari- ous models is very useful.

“There is an effort to identify by year, make and model the kinds of plastics that were used for the different compo- nents,” he explains. “If somebody could identify the type of plastic a part is made of, they could remove it from the car and channel it to a recycling facility that could handle it. Seat foam has to be pr*ocessed differently than thermoplas- tic bumpers, which have to be processed differently than a thermoset door pan- els, and all of that is different than nylon parts. You can’t throw it all in the pot like steel.’’

If recycling is defined very broadly to include pyrolysis and energy recovery, says Rouse, all plastics are probably recyclable.

“But if you talk about recycling a ther- moplastic bumper by cleaning it, grind-

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DESIGN FOR RECYCLING

ing it, making it into pellets, and making a new product out of it by putting it into a mold, that kind of recycling hinges upon the fact that the material has to be a thermoplastic. If it were made of ther- mosets, the same bumper would have to be processed totally differently, and the cost of processing it might exceed the value of the material.”

Auto makers are starting to substi- tute more easily recyclable materials such as aluminum wherever possible, says Rouse. This serves as an incentive for plastics manufacturers to make their products more recyclable.

Saturn Gorp., Springhill, Tenn., has made an effort to use thermoplastics in its cars, he adds. These are relatively easy to recycle once any adhesives and decorative items are removed (see re- lated story).

“In addition, there is a group of people that is working to get sheet molded compound and other less recycled ma-

terials recycled,” explains Rouse. “Al- ready, there is a demand for foam from the seats. One of the problems you have is getting the foam out, as seats are put together in a way that makes it hard. The OEMs will have to design seats differently so you can extract foam more easily.”

Automotive glass and rubber are problematic, he adds, as there are lim- ited uses for those materials and the cost of transporting them is high.

From a dismantler’s perspective, if a car could be sold to a shredder for more money after having all the upholstery, parts and other non-metallics removed, this would be an incentive for dismantlers to take apart more of the car, according to Rouse. To make this possible, markets for all of those mate- rials would have to be well developed.

T h e n a car is shredded, the shred- der incurs the cost of shredding and the cost to landfill ASR,” says Rouse. “If he

knew some suppliers could supply cars that were picked clean, he could pay more for those cars. To make this pos- sible, cars need to be designed so that it is relatively easy to remove all those components.” BEGINNINGS.TheVRDC,despitelofty goals, is just getting started, according to Schram.

“Right now we’re just getting every- thing up and running, trying out the equipment we’ve got and starting out slow before we get into any major projects,” he explains. ‘We have a good variety of equipment either supplied by companies that want us to demonstrate and use their new machinery, or that we’ve purchased.”

After testing the various pieces of equipment, the center will make recom- mendations to Big Three engineers, the ARA and the APC about the most ap- propriate equipment for dismantling.

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we process, we will add staff as we go,” says Schram. “We will process about 400 vehicle yearly, analyzing all makes, models and years. We’ll focus on newer models, although we will do some projects with older vehicles.”

The VRDC will conduct demonstra- tions on the most effective way to re- move various kinds of plastics, he ex- plains,withanemphasis onripping parts out rather than taking the time to unbolt and unscrew them.

It is ultimately for design engineers to decide the types of plastics vehicles will contain, Schram adds. The VRDC will make recommendations on disas- sembly procedures and sequences to the ARA, he adds, with the goal of reducing auto shredder residue.

‘We want to simplify the Society of Automotive Engineers standard codes for plastic,’’ according to Schram, “by gettingcompatible plastics together and starting to separate them and giving them to the APC to analyze and regrind

and see what kinds of new products they can manufacture.”

The VRDC recognizes the impor- tance of helping develop markets for recyclable materials recovered from cars, according to Schram, rather than putting a lopsided emphasis on collec- tion. To that end, the center is working with the APC to monitor companies that are already recycling car-related materials.

“There’s a company that’s doing some work with interior foam out of the seats,” he says. “Another company is recycling the acrylics, the headlight lenses and the taillight lenses ... We want to encourage the cottage industries by supplying some with materials and see- ing what they develop.”

But market development initiatives will take time, cautions Schram. “Back when plastics was the big thing, no one thought about the recycling end of it. Now we want to makes sure that we cut down the auto shredder residue and

keep it from going to landfill as much as possible.”

Although Schram agrees that the ul- timate goal is an almost completely re- cyclable car, he says its development will depend largely on the ability of de- sign engineers to reduce the types of and standardize plastics used in cars.

“An instrument panel today may have as many as 15 to 17 different varieties of materials, plus adhesives, foam, vinyl, fillers -- a whole variety of different materials,” says Schram. “HOW do you simplify it without losing the aesthetic value? (The engineers) have their work cut out for them. The goal of VRDC is to find out the feasibility of doing this.” TOTAL RECYCLABILITY. Themovement for a totally recyclable car, featuring a disassembly line, began in Europe, ac- cording to Al-jon’s Kneen, motivated by a strong environmental consciousness. The movement soon spread to the United States, as concern about landfill avail-

(Continued on page 140)

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MlDC (contzizziedfiom page 96)

ability grew. “Car manufacturers for the first time

got involved at the other end, and dis- covered that economic disassembly was almost as important as the substance the part was made of, and they began research in their own facilities taking apart cars.”

The United States has an advantage in its well-developed network of auto dismantlers, says Kneen, which Eu- rope does not have.

“These people know how to disas- semble a car, get the best parts off and recycle them if they can ... But they still are only equipped to pull off those items they can resell for a profit, not those they have no market for.”

Automobile and plastics manufac- turers, of course, play a role in making cars easier to disassemble, adds Kneen.

The American Plastics Council is now in the process of funding several projects,”. says Kneen. “Without a doubt, in a few years both the machinery and the polymers will be in place to effectively remove a lot of the plastics from cars.”

This will accomplish several things, he says. First, it will provide another profit potential for dismantlers, giv- ing them a market for another auto- motive material, much like aluminum.

“Secondly, it’s going to allow the shredder to receive a much cleaner automobile to put through their pro- cesses,” claims Kneen. “The yield lev- els, instead of 72 to 75 percent, might well be 85 to 95 percent. That will benefit shredders by giving them a better product, and it will benefit the landfills since less will be sent there.”

The industry is going in the right direction, he concludes. “It’s made as much progress as it made in the previ- ous four years in the last year. And I expect another quantum leap in the year to come.”

The author is associate editor of Recy- cling Today.

C&D (continuedfioni page 10.j)

developers’ pocketbooks will cause projects to fail. The lack of initial project development spending to fully understand the local marketplace is a regular prescription for failure. Even if the grinders grind, the screens screen and the magnets attract, the composi- tion of the processed C&D debris stream and process flow design may make the end-product materials non- saleable.

Most products are made with virgin materials, and most recyclers are trying to market slightly lower quality at a slightly lower price than virgin feed- stock. Out-of-specification material and contamination are, and will continue to be, key problems.

Equipment vendors will typically pro- vide a piece of equipment or a system designed for a specific job. The wise purchaser will have developed a variety of input material alternatives and may even observe demonstrations of several pieces of equipment.

However, along with the vendor dem- onstration, some vendors may exert a little pressure on the customer to make

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L I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I ~ 140 I February 1994 / RECYCLING TODAY Circle 56 on reader service card

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I