Automotive Industry Today

Automotive designers urged to consider ‘simpler’ materials for future vehicle recyclability

Automotive engineers and manufacturers should consider ‘simpler’ materials over high-performance composites at the initial design stage so that new motor vehicles can be more readily recycled at the end of their lives, urges a leading UK-based plastics recycler.
Published 27 July 2015

Automotive engineers and manufacturers should consider ‘simpler’ materials over high-performance composites at the initial design stage so that new motor vehicles can be more readily recycled at the end of their lives, urges a leading UK-based plastics recycler.

With no currently viable recycling routes for many of the recently developed materials used in modern lightweight vehicles, Keith Freegard, Director of Axion Polymers, asserts ‘these vehicle components and body parts might only be suitable for energy-from-waste schemes at end of life’.

He is calling on the sector to look at locally-sourced, sustainable options first, such as innovative, highly-specified 100% recycled polymers derived from a stable long-term supply of end-of-life vehicles. These closed-loop plastics offer significant carbon savings of between 50% and 75% when compared with virgin polymers, an important factor when the embedded carbon cost from selecting ‘fancy’ technical materials can become a major proportion of a low-carbon vehicle’s total life-cycle footprint.

Keith will be participating in the Materials Innovation Showcase organised by the Knowledge Transfer Network at the Cenex Low Carbon Vehicle Event 2015 in September where he will explain how Axion’s range of Axpoly® 100% recycled engineering polymers can help to satisfy the design requirement of the next generation of low carbon vehicles.

Keith says: “While I applaud the use of novel new materials to make lightweight motor vehicle bodies and structural components for cars, my challenge to materials scientists and designers is to think about the simpler alternatives: mono-materials that save carbon and can be eventually recovered for re-use at end of life.

“It is tempting to use more unusual composite and reinforced fibre products that can make exciting lightweight components. Yet there appears to be scant regard given to how these very technical, high-performing and complicated composites are treated at the end of a vehicle’s life as they currently cannot be recycled.”

He adds: “In my view, our rapidly-growing automotive sector offers tremendous opportunity for innovate thinking and product design with the development of electric and hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicles requiring completely new concepts. Crucially, the potential for incorporating sustainably-sourced recovered materials, that can offer cost savings in new components, should not be overlooked.”

Axion Polymers’ high-quality 100% recycled Axpoly® plastics are extracted from end-of-life vehicles at its Shredder Waste Advanced Processing Plant (SWAPP) at Trafford Park and further refined at its nearby Salford facility. Further investment has created higher capacity to produce greater volumes of polypropylene and a new grade of ABS, which are all traceable back to their origin in UK end-of-life vehicles.

Axion Polymers is part of the Axion Group that develops and operates innovative resource recovery and processing solutions for recycling waste materials. The Group works with a wide range of clients within the recycling and process industries on the practical development of new processing and collection methods.

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