What happens in a car recycling facility?
When a car reaches the end of its life cycle, the owner of the car may sell it to a junk yard or auto-recycling facility. Once the car reaches the junkyard or recycling facility, it goes through four basic steps.
Here, we’ll take a detailed look at what happens after your car arrives at a vehicle recycling plant – from the initial dismantling to the weird and wonderful ways that its materials will be used long after it’s left the road. We explore what happens at a car scrap yard when your car arrives for further processing and examine what vehicle recycling means.
Step 1:
Detailed inspection: A recycling facility inspects the car to see if it is more valuable to repair than to recycle. If the repairing looks unprofitable, the recycling facility proceeds with dismantling and recycling. Around 90% of the cars in a junk yard are dismantled and recycled rather than repaired.
Do you know?
- Salvaged car parts can be found on even the most irreparable vehicles. In fact, when a car has been totaled in an accident, up to 70% of its auto parts can still be used for parts in the future.
- Buying used car parts saves you a lot of money. Depending on the age and type of the part, you could save between 20 and 80 percent buying used instead of buying new.
- Choosing used car parts is a great way to go green. If no one bought used car parts, they would sit in junkyards and rust. Because landfill space is already scarce, it’s a better idea to buy these used car parts at a discounted price. Not only is it economically smart but it’s environmentally sound.
Step 2:
Dismantling: With the car clear of any harmful fluids or hazardous materials, dismantling can begin.
Generally, recycling plants will start by removing the following items from the vehicle:
Catalytic converters
A vehicle’s catalytic converter plays an important part in making sure harmful particles are filtered out of exhaust emissions – but to do this, gases are passed over a range of precious metals – including platinum, rhodium, and palladium – each more valuable than gold.
As well as being valuable, catalytic converters are considered hazardous when their ceramic inner is opened – so they need to be removed from the car to be dismantled individually.
Glass & Glass Recycling
Although broken glass might seem useless – it can actually be reused again and again. Essentially, grinding the glass down turns it back into sand – and from there, it can either be used again as sand or be heated and formed into glass once again.
Recycling plastic parts & Plastic Recycling
The plastic parts of the vehicle may also be removed at this stage. Today, most vehicles have plastic bumpers and dashboards – and some even have plastic body panels. Since these items are sturdy and have a long life, many are sold to be reused on other vehicles – although new processes also mean the ‘thermoplastic polyolefin’ (TPO) that’s used to make these parts can be recovered and used again in manufacturing.
Generally, the next step in a plastic component’s life will depend on the price of oil. That might sound odd – but the price of oil is one of the largest costs involved with plastic production. As a result; high oil prices drive up the demand for recycled plastic – whereas low oil prices make it more cost-effective to produce new plastic polymers. Plastic parts are recycled – but there are many economic factors that will decide when that happens and what they go on to be used for.
Further dismantling
When these items are removed, the recycling plant will make a decision about the rest of the vehicle. In some cases, the vehicle will move on to the next stage of recycling largely intact – but in other cases, further parts will be removed.
For instance; the vehicle’s interior may be removed with the fabric recycled separately. Non-ferrous metals, such as copper and electrical components, can also be stripped from the car and recycled by specialist facilities.
Tyres & Tyre Recycling
Tyres can sometimes be reused on other vehicles – but generally, they will need to be removed to be recycled by a specialist.
Again, tyres can be harmful to the environment if they’re not handled appropriately, so it’s important that they’re given special consideration before any intensive recycling methods are used on the remainder of the vehicle.
The safety glass that’s used in cars is a little trickier to recycle than general household glass – but with the technology becoming more widespread, this is now in many parts of the UK.
Step 4:
Crushing and shredding: Once all the recyclable car parts—except metals such as iron and steel—are sorted out and stored or sold, all that remains is the car body, which includes different metals and is crushed and shredded into a flat metal chunk. If the chunk were pressed into a cube, it would be roughly the size of a small microwave oven.
After metals are shredded – Metal Shredding
After being shredded, metals are magnetically separated from any remaining recyclable materials – such as plastic. When this separation is complete, the metal will be treated in a chemical solution that removes the thin layer of tin that prevents mild steel from rusting.
The process is referred to as ‘detinning’ – and the thin tin layer is actually dissolved in caustic soda. Don’t worry though; the tin can be recovered from this solution later – so waste products are kept to an absolute minimum.
With the metal components now free of any protective coating, the steel itself can be melted down. To keep the resulting product as versatile as possible, it will usually be rolled into flat sheets – which can then be reused in a huge number of different industries.
Other shredded materials
Since vehicles may or may not be stripped of non-metal parts before destruction, as well as shredded metals, there are plastics and other materials that are produced when the car reaches this final processing stage.
The mixture of plastic, fibres, rubber, glass, and other materials is referred to as Automotive Shredder Residue – or ASR for short. ASR can contain hazardous materials such as lead and zinc – so once again, this needs to be handled according to strict environmental guidelines.
Although the technology is fairly new – there are ways to recycle this combination of waste products, including converting it into synthetic crude oil or using it in industrial chemical processes.