Association for developing the recycling of PVC in the Automotive Industry

Recovery of PVC in ELV

Preamble:

In France, the potential amount of automotive plasticized PVC to recycle includes:

• 6 000 T/year of PVC waste from production scraps: 75% are land filled and 1500 T/year are recycled
• 6 000 T/year of PVC waste from End-of-Life vehicles (ELV): we have calculated this volume by taking into account 4 kg/vehicle of PVC available by dismantling and/or coming from the ASR and 1.5 million of ELV per year.

As far as all plastics are involved, we assess that the total volume of plastics in ELV is 200 000 T/year around in France. The parts based on plastics could be also partially dismantled.

Regulations:

The increasing quantity of vehicles in Western Europe and the impact of waste coming from dismantling of ELV have led to new regulations after long discussions about:

• All-shredding attitude,
• Selective dismantling policy in order to keep as usual the business of used parts for car dismantlers,

In spite of current recycling for some plastic parts, as PP in battery housing or bumpers or PPMA in rear lights, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have adopted Directive on ELV (Directive 2000/53/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 18 September 2000 on end-of-life vehicles). This Directive specifies in its article 7.4 that vehicles type-approved in accordance with Directive 70/156/CEE and put on the market after three years after the amendment of Directive 70/156/CEE need to be re-usable and/or recyclable.

The Directive on ELV was adopted by French Parliament, by the following regulation: "Décret sur la construction des véhicules et l'élimination des véhicules hors d'usage: n° 2003/727 of 1 August 2003" (published on JO n° 179 of 5 August 2003).


These regulations are based on:

• In order to facilitate the dismantling and recovery, in particular recycling of ELV, vehicle manufacturers should provide authorized treatment facilities with all requisite dismantling information
• The following targets:
• No later than 1 January 2006, for all ELV the reuse and recovery shall be increased to a minimum of 85 % by an average weight per vehicle and year
• No later than 1 January 2015, for all ELV the reuse and recovery shall be increased to a minimum of 95 % by an average weight per vehicle and year

The reuse of components, which are suitable for reuse, the recovery of components, which cannot be reused and the giving of preference to recycling are encouraged.

AUTOVINYLE commitment and « Vehicle Dismantling » Project

It appears clearly that the all-shredding solution is not adapted to the requirements of the "ELV Directive".

• INDRA (38 - Bourgoin-Jallieu), which manages a network of 300 automotive dismantlers. This network deals with about 300 000 vehicles per year in France.
• ENSAM (unité de recherche sur le recyclage) (73 - Chambéry), which has a technical expertise in splitting, sorting and recovery technologies.

These two players had already worked together during two years in a join program concerning total dismantling of ELV with a consultant, NOVA CONCEPT. This consultant had a lot of experience in the field of automotive shredding, recycling industry and ELV recovery.
The aim of this study was to evaluate:

• Direct costing coming from teardown (time - quality- selectivity etc.)
• The ability of the system to achieve a total dismantling up to the body-in-white, which would be supplied to the shredder.

.This preliminary work enabled to start in September 2003 a project focused on flexible PVC parts. These parts were easy to teardown and to identify by professionals, which were not specialized in plastics.

This project was carried out at MAS, a company located at Pont de Beauvoisin (73330), on a sampling of 25 vehicles, which were representative of the French parc of ELV.

Selected PVC parts included:

• Sun visors,
• Seat covers,
• Door panels,
• Headliners,
• Various boots (gearbox and handbrake levers, etc.),
• Some package trays..

Then, PVC products coming from this dismantling were identified, and weighed. The teardown times were very precisely measured as in a current industrial process.

The treatment of cableways and instrument panels was separately studied.

Results of the Dismantling Project:

Some data:

• By car: 1.52 kg of flexible PVC (coming from all automotive components except for electrical cable harnesses and instrument panels) was collected
• Overall weight recovered: 38 kg of flexible PVC
• Selective dismantling time: 18 minutes/vehicle (all included)

The productivity can be improved off course in the frame of an industrial process. Different tooling choice or technical systems, which participate in the know-how of the dismantling companies, can allow a decrease in teardown times.

Three dismantler members of INDRA network collected several tonnes of PVC waste in 2004.
These flexible PVC products were tested in existing recycling technologies.
They included densification process from CHAIZE Company and dissolution process from VINYLOOP Company.

Moreover, INDRA planned since 2004 to set up an industrial facility at Romorantin in order to tear down ELV (25 to 50 vehicles a day). This plant, called Re-Sources, started running in the beginning of 2007. As all plastic parts are involved, this dismantling of polymers will enable to breakdown the labour cost between different players

Thus, AUTOVINYLE has achieved its first objective.

Ainsi ce premier objectif de l'étude réalisée par l'Association AUTOVINYLE avait été atteint.

Today

In order to energize and consolidate recycling networks of PVC waste coming from automotive production scraps or ELV, it is compulsory to find new applications for the recycled material.
In 2006, AUTOVINYLE has strongly developed these applications (See Recycled PVC applications).

Tomorrow ?

Concerning the recovery of polymers from ASR, new applications are emerging. They include energy recovery of waste and/or recycling of ASR powder in concrete.