Thursday, October 30, 2008 6:53:52 AM
The recycling of scrap metals from automobiles is a little known success story. While community and municipal blue box campaigns tout a 25 percent success rate, a 75 percent recycling rate for automobiles is often overlooked. However, the 25 percent that remains, called auto fluff, is a recycling dilemma that demands attention and solutions. Why?
Estimates indicate that 700 000 automobiles are disposed of in Canada annually, generating approximately 700 000 tonnes of ferrous scrap materials and 200 000 tonnes of auto fluff. Auto fluff is a complex mixture of non-ferrous materials including plastics, foam, textiles, rubber and glass. Because this fluff is complex and is contaminated with rust, dirt and a variety of fluids, its recyclability poses a challenge to Canadian shredding operators.
As well as the difficulties inherent in recycling auto fluff materials, Canada's recycling industry must also deal with recent auto manufacturing trends. In an effort to achieve better fuel economy and reduce emissions, automobile manufacturers are using lighter weight, non-metallic materials. Newer automobiles are manufactured using less metal, while the use of plastics and other non-ferrous components is increasing. The net effect leaves shredders with lower volumes of recyclable metal and greater volumes of auto fluff for disposal or recycling.
Consequently, the need to explore new and innovative ways to recycle auto fluff, or to recover valuable resource material from this waste, is an urgent environmental and economic issue. The National Research Council's Institute for Environmental Research and Technology works with Canada's plastics industry, auto manufacturers and shredding operators to identify opportunities to recover potentially valuable resources from this waste stream. Some options being investigated are the use of the material as an alternative landfill day cover, the combination of auto fluff materials with other recycled plastics to produce composite materials, and using shredded material as a pyrolytic feedstock to recover chemicals and fuels.
http://autorecyclers.blogspot.com/2007/07/auto-fluff-what-to-do-with-remaining-25_16.html
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