Research continues to improve automobile recyclability.
The Vehicle Recycling Development Center in Highland Park, Mich., continues to plunge into the business of automotive dismantling and recycling. Barely 18 months after its inception, the VRDC, under the direction of the Vehicle Recycling Partnership -- a coalition of the Big Three automakers and the Automotive Recyclers’ Association -- continues to pursue an ambitious agenda of projects and joint research initiatives.
At the center, dismantlers from the ARA and engineers from Chrysler Corp., General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. are dismantling cars and cataloguing their plastics content, as well as researching design changes to make cars more easily dismantled and recycled.
The VRDC’s goals are to develop guidelines to enhance future automobile recyclability; promote the increased use of recyclable and recycled material in vehicle design; and bring together government, university and industry groups to share information and demonstrate state-of-the-art recycling know-how.
Efforts toward recycling plastics alone have progressed "tremendously," says Caludia Duranceau, technical research manager of plastics at Ford and co-chair of the VRP’s disassembly group.
"We have a task force on acoustical applications from seat foam that is being supported by the Polyurethane and Recycling and Recovery Council as part of that project."
The center is also making headway with a fluids study launched more than a year ago, says Duranceau. The fluids study includes research conducted in conjunction with the Society of Automotive Engineers to investigate the feasibility of standardizing fluid cap sizes. "We hope to come up with some standards as well as standard procedures for handling these materials," says Duranceau.
In addition to the ongoing projects like fluids removal and fluid cap standardization, a number of newer projects are under way, she says. "We’ve just kicked off an instrument panel recycling project, in which we have four task forces working on it."
At presstime, the instrument panel group had only held one meeting, and another was scheduled for mid-March. "A project like that with four large task forces will be quite a big effort during the next year, because it encompasses a different variety of components, different functions in a vehicle as well as different materials. So I think it’s probably one of the biggest challenges of the vehicle."
She predicts that the recyclable portion of the automobile could be increased to 85 percent or even 90 percent in the near future. "But then it becomes a matter of diminishing returns," she notes. "If you take things out of a vehicle, you’re going to leave some things behind. If you take it out for reuse, you take it out differently than if you’re collecting it for material. So it’s at a point where we’re optimizing the best of what we have and what we think has the most potential, and then we’re looking for alternatives to prevent it from going to landfill."
All speculation aside, however, she notes that even a 75-percent recycling rate is "quite good compared to most durable goods."
PLASTICS
VRDC is working with the American Chemical Society’s rubber topical group on elastomer recycling. "We’re collecting weather stripping and hoses and some mixed elastomers," she explains. "And we’re working with some elastomer reprocessors to see just what can be made out of these materials and the properties that are generated."
The Big Three’s agreement a few years back to mark all plastic components according to the SAE J1344 marking protocol is starting to pay off, as some of those cars are being turned in at the end of their lifecycles.
"As we find the marking, we’re separating them and we’re working with the American Plastics Council," says Duranceau. "What we’re also doing is working on resin identification, because most of the vehicles going out of registration right now are 10 or 12 years old, so they don’t contain marked plastics. We’re also working on methods of identification in the field fairly quickly, so that we can help to sort and identify materials that would have potential for further recyclng."
TIME FRAME?
Duranceau says it’s "hard to say" how long the VRDC’s current research might continue. "Certainly, the partnership was origianlly set up for five years, but that’s how a pre-competitive research consortium is usually set up. And then it’s renewed. We’ve had other consortia under USCAR that have gone on now for more than 10 years. I would say that in three to five years, we probably will have enhanced the infrastructure to a point where we’ll want to reevaluate where we’re going. But it’s a situation where, once you work on the big things, then the small things become important. It’s hard to put an end on some things."
Instead, she prefers to look at the research as part of a continuum rather than a specific time frame.
"We get our engineers down here to participate in the projects, because a lot of technology transfer is communication," she says. "Technology transfer is a contact sport. If you’re there and seeing the issues, you can take that experience back and design your parts a little more smart. Certainly, recyclability is one aspect, but we’re not going to sacrifice cost or quality or performance either. We have to be aware of all of the tradeoffs."
The VRDC is preparing to publish, initially for internal purposes, a list of preferred practices, as a means of recommending to designers what materials work best together from a design standpoint. "That way we can say, ‘well, these two materials go together better than those two materials, so keep this in mind as you design new parts.’"
Automotive dismantling and recycling, she maintains, is made up of a series of alternatives. "There are no right or wrong answers. Where recycling one way might be feasible today, if something changes, another alternative might become more feasible."
The idea behind the VRDC is to be a benchmark facility wherein automotive recyclers can have access to research that will help them develop insights into their own businesses, she says.
"(ARA ) is a trade association, so each of those businesses is very very unique. They’re seeing things demonstrated here, and then they’re going and trying them in their own businesses."
The possibility exists for similar research centers elsewhere, Duranceau notes.
"Certainly, it’s something that would have to evolve out of the infrastructure, because there was a need to collect some of these materials that are of future value."
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