Investigating improved vehicle dismantling and fragmentation technology

We conduct a screening comparison using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to model two end-of-life vehicle (ELV) waste management scenarios. The first is the prevalent scrapping process, which entails shredding. The second is manual disassembly, a hypothetical scenario designed to reach the targets in the EU ELV Directive for 2015. The LCA considers three impact categories; climate change, metal depletion, and cumulative energy demand (CED), and identifies the potential lifecycle environmental and resource impacts of new ELV dismantling and recycling processes. Manual disassembly significantly reduces climate change impact and metal depletion, by recycling more polymers and copper and recovering more energy via incineration. The CED is much lower in the manual than the shredding scenario, mainly due to increased recycling and energy recovery, over half the reduction being attributable to polymer recycling and energy recovery. The manual scenario is significantly better than the shredding scenario in terms of environmental and resource impacts, recovering more copper and recycling more polymers. The current shredding scenario does not fulfil the current or future requirements of the ELV Directive. We identify a need to develop new ELV scrapping methods for better resource management and to investigate the value of "new" materials in ELVs, such as rare earth elements. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.