Agreement Will Reduce Auto Shredder Waste in Europe

Argonne National Laboratory and Salyp Recycling Center of Belgium have signed a license agreement for a new process for recovering previously unrecoverable material from scrapped vehicles. The material, known as auto shredder residue (ASR), includes a mixture of plastics, fabric, foam, dirt, and a variety of other materials. It is generated when vehicles are shredded to recover the more valuable metal from the scrap.

The process is of particular importance in Europe, where the waste from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) must be reduced by 40% by the year 2005 under European Union directives. “And there is no technology available yet to recycle ASR, except for the technology developed at Argonne,” said Ivan Vanherpe, Salyp project manager. “The Argonne technology avoids the scenario of landfilling or burning of ASR.”

Vanherpe estimates that each junked vehicle contains about 250 kg of ASR – about 550 pounds. That makes for an annual total in Europe of 3 billion kg of material that is currently sent to incinerators or landfills.

With the new technology, the ASR is separated into three different streams, says Bassam Jody, one of the Argonne engineers who developed the process. Plastic-rich streams, iron oxides, and polyurethane foam can each separately be recycled to other uses. Tests show that the resulting polyurethane foam meets performance criteria for new-material carpet padding and for reuse in automotive applications, Vanherpe said. The process is fully continuous, minimizing materials handling and labor costs.

Design of a full-scale demonstration plant is under way in Belgium, and Argonne will participate with Salyp in the demonstration to show the technical and economic impacts of the process. The Salyp ELV Center will become operational in 2000, and is expected to prove that Argonne’s recycling technology can be adapted to the European ELV directives without taxpayer support, Vanherpe said.

"To date, many people have just talked about developing a 'recyclable' automobile. This Argonne technology represents the first practical step forward in recovering automobile polyurethane foam rather than throwing it into a landfill," says Paul Betten, Argonne licensing executive for this technology. "Further, Argonne has developed other separations technology that will aid in recovering other high value plastics from the automobile waste stream that will make recycling an even more profitable business.”