A tool to evaluate the impacts of an innovation on a product's recyclability rate by adopting a modular approach: automotive sector application

Abstract

While the European regulation on the end-of-life vehicle is more and more strict, the introduction of innovations makes the material composition of vehicles evolve and can lead to a risk for approval on the recoverability of the vehicle. We set up a preventive tool named OSIRIS to evaluate the impact of an innovation on the recyclability rate of a vehicle. The innovation teams and the vehicle project leaders may obtain a tendency of this impact. It is supported 1) by a modular point of view of the vehicle, 2) by a simplifying assumption for fixing a module, and 3) on a management of the end-oflife options. By testing this approach on a hybrid motorization, we show that the uncertainty resulting from the simplifying hypothesis is less than 0.20% when the initial and innovative solutions have a mass difference less than 40-60 kg. 1 Context Since the end of the 90's, the car has become one of the most regulated products, for example on pollutants (European Parliament, Council, 2007) and carbon dioxide emissions (European Parliament, Council, 2009) during the use. The analysis of (Schipper, 2011) shows that, since the 80's, in spite of the reduction of fuel consumption relative to the vehicle mass, the vehicle mass and power have never stopped to increase because of the rise in the levels of service expected by the customer. According to

End-of-Life in the railway sector: Analysis of recyclability and recoverability for different vehicle case studies

“…The aim of the formalization of loss factors focuses the approach on Final version at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2016.09.034 the calculation of realistically recoverability/recyclability rates instead of theoretical ones. Such an assessment is in accordance with the latest trends in the sector of preliminary recyclability assessment (Garcia et al, 2015) and it has also been applied in studies related to other kinds of durable goods, such as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE; see Mizuno et al, 2012). A point of criticism that affects the method proposed by UNIFE is the limited knowledge of recovery/recycling processes that effectively are performed at vehicle EoL; more particularly, the selection of -which parts are processed within the different EoL steps -which typology of treatment has to be applied to the specific component and material is performed through qualitative or arbitrary estimations (e.g., accessibility of the part and availability of recyclers on the local market) and, therefore, it is affected by a notable margin of uncertainty.…”

Heavy vehicles on the road towards the circular economy: Analysis and comparison with the automotive industry

“…Garcia et al (2015) propose a tool for 540 evaluating the impact of innovation on the EoL pathway of a vehicle. The goal of this tool, called 541 OSIRIS (Simulation Tool of the Impact on Recyclability of Innovations), developed in collaboration 542 with the French automotive manufacturer PSA, is to help the engineers of the innovation department 543 evaluate the impact of their innovations on a vehicle's recyclability and recoverability rates.…”

Scrap automotive electronics: A mini-review of current management practices

“…Curiously, these three processes act without any assessment of the potential embedded value (in terms of materials content) of treated ECUs by recyclers (Garcia et al, 2015; Go et al, 2011; Park et al, 2014; Xu et al, 2014). This means that some high valuable ECUs in bad structural conditions (and almost all of the low value ECUs) are incinerated or landfilled (as part of ASR fraction), instead of following a more accurate recycling process.…”

“…However, even intensive dismantling is not immune from problems. In fact, as vehicle material’s composition changes, higher dismantling/recovery rates are needed to ensure economic viability of the recycling infrastructure (Ferrão et al, 2006; Garcia et al, 2015). Furthermore, even in the case of significantly higher rates of dismantling and plastics recovery, the amount of shredder residue per vehicle will continue to rise (Raboni et al, 2015).…”