Future Scrap Inventory

As the materials and components that go into automobiles change, so too do the recoverable elements. There is a gradual move to more plastics and aluminum in vehicles at the expense of steel. While this changes the percentage of each product recovered from a vehicle, it really does not change the actual makeup of the car. Steel, aluminum, plastic and glass remain the basics.

The last big changes in automotive content were the advent of the catalytic converter and the airbag. Converters are valuable and a whole new branch of recycling was established around catalytic converter recovery. Airbags are another recent quantum shift in the removal and recovery of auto components, and the sector promises to grow.

If there is a new branch of recovery coming up in the near future, it will be for uncommon auto batteries - that is, those different from the lead-acid batteries typical today.

Auto manufacturers also face the stringent European laws requiring disassembly information on every vehicle. The law requires a demonstrated 85% recycling rate initially, growing to a 95% recoverability rate of components, including batteries.

Auto manufacturers generally face engineering hurdles in two end-of-life areas: lightweighting of vehicles, which results in a different mix of components coming into the recycling stream; and alternative fuel or hybrid fuel vehicles, which introduces new battery and new fuel tank materials into the stream.

(Recycling Today will look at the steel industry’s move to reclaim fuel tank market share from the plastics industry as part of the May 2001 commodity focus on ferrous scrap.)

LIGHTWEIGHTING

The use of plastics is one facet of the overall move in the auto industry toward “lightweighting” vehicles to gain fuel efficiency. The rub comes when the vehicle is wrecked or otherwise reaches the end of its usable life, and the components have to be recovered and recycled.

“We lightweight with aluminum and with different sorts of plastics. As we do that, we change the percentage composition of the vehicle,” says Doris Hill, senior staff engineer in General Motors’ Designing for the Environment group, Flint, Mich. She deals with end-of-life issues every day.

“It’s going to be interesting how we meet the standards for Europe,” she continues. “Some of the new plastics don’t have the necessary recycling infrastructure in place in the United States or in Europe,” she continues. “It is not that the materials are not recyclable, but there is no infrastructure in place.”

Ming-Jou Chen of Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., Torrance, Calif., (www.toyota.com), says the new Prius uses Toyota Super Olefin Polymer (TSOP), an easily recycled plastic “when facilities for doing so are readily available” for its bumpers, dashboard, pillar garnish, and other interior items. The ready availability of facilities remains a tricky question.

There are no secondary components built into the bumpers. This makes dismantling much easier, she continues. Toyota’s Recycled Sound-Proofing Products (RSPP), made from automotive shredder residue, are used as floor sound insulation. Lead was eliminated from the ceramic coating on the windows, and from the wiring harness.

“The Prius uses about 25% less refrigerant than conventional cars,” she adds.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHARGE

New vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight use nickel-metal hydride batteries. The Prius sedan now ranks as the most environmentally friendly gasoline-powered vehicle on sale in the U.S., according to The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Washington, www.greenercars.org. However, ACEEE ranks vehicles mainly on their fuel efficiency and emissions, not on their end-of-life-cycle disposal.

The Ford Ranger uses an absorbed glass mat lead-acid technology in its batteries. The new batteries are nearly 100% recyclable, according to Lawrence Simmering, chief engineer in the energy systems department of Think at Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich.

“This is different technology than the 12-volt battery in a traditional vehicle,” Simmering says. Indeed, if the battery is tipped upside down or broken in an accident, there is no leakage. The technology also gives the batteries longer life.

All of the Ranger batteries go back to East Penn Manufacturing, Lion Station, Pa where they are dismantled. The lead is re-smelted. The plastic body is crushed and used to make new battery casings. Even the acid is reclaimed, some being diluted and processed to make fertilizer that is used on farms in the area.

“The battery is virtually 100% recycled,” Simmering says.

Another vehicle that uses new-technology batteries is the Honda Insight (www.honda2001.com/insight). Insight gathered a lot of publicity regarding its fuel-efficient operation: it promises 70 mpg, and claims to have reached 90 mpg in the Tour de Sol road rally.

The Insight’s fueling system is an Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) hybrid power system. It combines an ultra-efficient 1.0-liter, 3-cylinder gasoline engine with a powerful but compact 10-kilowatt electric motor/generator and a nickel/metal hydride battery pack for improved efficiency. Electricity is generated by regenerative braking during normal operation, meaning the Insight never requires an outside source of electric power.

Keep in mind that the Prius and Insight are hybrid vehicles and are on the market today. Pure electric vehicles, like the Toyota E-Com, are still mostly experimental and are in limited production.

The General Motors Ovonic battery, the powerhouse of its EV-1, is a nickel-metal hydride unit. General Motors Corp., Detroit, is reclaiming spent batteries, completely discharging them, and shipping them out for recycling through another operation. While the battery components are not 100% recycled, according to Vince Hellmann, product manager for the Ovonic, “We come pretty darn close.”

The active material, nickel, is reclaimed. The cells are housed in a stainless steel can. Terminals and straps are copper. All of those materials are recovered. The rubber protective caps and the epoxy coating are not recovered. There is not sufficient volume yet to make it economically feasible to recover some of the other materials like vanadium, although Hellmann notes that they are certainly recoverable. The metal oxides are used for road pavement.

“Once the volume increases, they will be recycled because of their value,” Hellmann says.

Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich., also uses nickel-based batteries in some of its Rangers and hybrid vehicles. These are not yet in production. However, Simmering says the recovery process will be similar to that used in its lead batteries, with an EPA-approved company (in this case Inmetco, Ellwood City, Pa., www.inmetco.com) recycling the nickel components. The nickel recovered there is used in the manufacture of stainless steel.

“If nickel batteries get to be super-high volume they will go back to a recycler,” Simmering expects.

A new technology being examined by the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), is the lithium battery.

“At some time we’ll be looking at lithium battery technology,” Simmering says. He notes that lithium batteries - the same technology used in camcorders - give about twice the energy output per unit of weight than traditional batteries.

“Lithium is the lightest solid at room temperature,” Simmering explains. “Lithium is lighter than nickel, and is lighter than lead.” Since weight is a major consideration in any vehicle - whether traditional, hybrid, or electronic - there will be real advantages to using lithium technology once the issues facing developers of electronic vehicle-sized batteries overcome their challenges. USABC is working with the U.S. Department of Energy and several other industry groups to develop a production-quality lithium-based auto battery.

WORKING ON RECYCLING

All of the auto manufacturers are well aware of end-of-life requirements, but the emphasis in working with power systems and fueling tends to be on saving fuel as an up-front design factor. Who is working on end-of-life issues like battery disposal?

Nancy Hazard, associate director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (www.nesea.org), Greenfield, Mass., says she has been asking questions about vehicle recyclability for years.

Other groups like the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas, (www.evaa.org, Washington, D.C.) focus on effecting policy to get electric cars into the marketplace, not end-of-life concerns.

The U.S. government has a standing committee working on the battery issue, however. The Battery Reclamation and Recycling Subgroup (BRRS), part of the Advanced Battery Readiness Ad Hoc Working Group in the Department of Energy (www.ott.doe.gov/oaat/batteryreadiness), evaluates recycling options for each battery technology and assesses the industry’s capability to handle large quantities of spent batteries. The subgroup is chaired by Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, N.M.

Another active group is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (www.nrel.gov), in Golden, Colo.

BRRS originally examined a variety of options for treating expended sodium beta (sodium/sulfur and sodium/nickel chloride) batteries. After considering land-filling, neutralization of reactive materials, and reclamation/recycling as three possible treatment methods, the subgroup concluded that reclamation/recycling was both environmentally preferable and the most cost-effective option for sodium beta battery chemistry.

BRRS found reclamation/recycling is even more cost-effective for battery technologies that use significant quantities of high-value materials such as cobalt and nickel.

“Both Europe and the United States are well set up for recovery of metals like steel, aluminum and magnesium,” Hill notes.

NEW BODY TYPES

Providing for about a third of the Insight’s fuel efficiency is its highly aerodynamic design and extensive use of lightweight materials including aluminum, plastic and magnesium.

At 1,847 pounds (with manual transmission), the Insight and its aluminum body structure are 40% lighter than a comparably-sized steel-bodied vehicles.

The aluminum fraction in cars is growing at about 6% per year, and has doubled in the past 10 years. While the fraction of aluminum in cars is on the increase, it is not all smooth sailing.

Aluminum faces its own challenges. Is a vehicle like the Insight going to be stigmatized as “cheap aluminum?” Not if Honda or the aluminum industry can help it. Honda says the Insight’s extensive use of aluminum takes advantage of the high energy-absorbing potential of the material, further providing a high level of safety for all occupants.

Aluminum will pass plastic as the number three component among auto materials (by weight) sometime this year. Only iron and steel are ahead of aluminum in terms of average weight per vehicle.

The average per-vehicle content of aluminum is 257 pounds. Cars like the 2001 Mercury Mountaineer SUV now have aluminum front fenders and hoods - areas traditionally belonging to steel and sometimes plastic.

The V-8 Lincoln LS has 450 pounds of aluminum in it - nearly double the average car’s 280 pounds - and nobody would call it a cheap vehicle.

The most aluminum-intensive vehicle made in North America is the Oldsmobile Aurora from GM. It has about 480 pounds of aluminum, including the suspension of the V-6 model.

In addition, GM is using aluminum engines, instead of iron engines, in its 2001 GMC and Chevy 2500 and 3500 pickups and crew cabs.

Look for an ever-increasing fraction of aluminum to come through the dismantling and shredding process, but don’t count the traditional steel fraction out of the market.

Steel recently scored a major win at Saturn, where it was chosen for the cages, or “spaceframes” as GM terms them, on the new Saturn SUVs to be produced as 2002 models.

The hoods, roofs and liftgates on the SUVs will be made of steel. Plastics, however, will be used in the body side panels and the fenders.

MORE AIRBAGS

Another commonly recycled component, the air bag, is a standard feature on the Insight as well as other “new age” and traditional vehicles.

On the new Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Stratus sedans, for example, an optional side-curtain airbag is available, deploying from two different areas.

Passenger-side airbags have become increasingly standard. Several other vehicle models offer both the front and side airbag options.

Recovery of the airbag already is a standard part of auto dismantling and should continue to be an important, if specialized, sector of the business.

Other fractions of the car also will be under pressure for increased recycling. Glass is a major weight factor in vehicles and recycling auto glass is a fertile area for development.

Polymers like polypropylene will also need to be recycled if end-of-live recycling goals are to be realized. Automotive plastics, because of the diversity and mixtures of materials, remains one of the more troublesome areas for recycling initiatives, but the field holds promise.

MARKET MOVING

While we wait for tomorrow’s components to show up in the stream, today’s underlying market is moving along, although not booming. Marty Wilhelm, Youngstown Iron & Metal, has little problem selling the traditional iron component to North Star Steel, his neighbor in northeast Ohio.

The mix of aluminum, copper, brass and zinc is re-refined. “We have no problem moving it at good numbers,” Wilhelm says. The plastic fluff goes to the landfill.

Where the crunch comes is in buying. “We get price compression,” Wilhelm explains. “Our problem is that we can’t always buy at the margin you need. On the bottom-side you can only go so low before you meet price resistance.”

The typical auto wrecker does not differentiate between vehicles. But there is a fixed investment in the car, in hauling it, and in overhead. If the offer price does not provide an incentive to sell, the wreck stays in the yard until prices perk up.

Despite the pressure, “the business still exists,” Wilhelm says.

It does not take the wisdom of Isaac Newton to know that changes in vehicle makeup will not come about overnight. Steel, metal and plastic will be the mainstays of recycling operations for the near future. However, there are opportunities - especially in states like California, where alternative energy vehicles have strong support both from the state and the citizenry - to get in on the ground floor of recycling some of the specialized materials going into the car of the future.

“Sure, GM is in favor of recycling,” Hill says. “We would hope that economics will drive recycling. If there is economic justification - if people can make a buck off it - then the infrastructure will come together.”

Another of Newton’s laws says that a body at rest will remain at rest. As a recycler, he would have noted that a business that rests on its laurels is doomed to rest eternally. That advice would pertain to shredders: the change in vehicle makeup will be gradual, but it will come about. Be prepared to move when the industry changes.

(The author is an environmental writer and contributing editor of Recycling Today based in Strongsville, Ohio.)