Disposal and Recycle Economic Assessment for Aircraft and Engine End of Life Solution Evaluation

Abstract

The present study proposes an economic indicator to support the evaluation of aircraft End of Life (EoL) strategies in view of the increasing demand with regards to aircraft decommissioning. This indicator can be used to evaluate an economic performance and to facilitate the trade-off studies among different strategies. First, Disposal and Recycle (D&R) scenarios related to stakeholders are investigated to identify the core concepts for the economic evaluation. Next, we extracted the aircraft D&R process from various real-life practices. In order to obtain the economic measure for the engineering process, a method of estimating the D&R cost and values are developed by integrating product, process and cost properties. This analysis is demonstrated on an averaged data set and two EoL aircraft cases. In addition, sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of the D&R cost, residual value, and salvage value. Results show that the disassembly and dismantling of an aircraft engine possesses relatively more economic gains than that for the aircraft. The main factors influencing the proposed D&R economic indicator are the salvage value and D&R cost for economically efficient D&R cases. In addition, delaying the disposal and recycle process for EoL aircraft can lead to economically unfavorable solutions. The economic indicator combined with the evaluation methods is widely applicable for evaluations of engineering products EoL solutions, and implies a significant contribution of this research to decision making for such complex systems in terms sustainable policy.

Integrating X-reality and lean into end-of-life aircraft parts disassembly sequence planning: a critical review and research agenda

“…To further clarify the level of decision and highlight the related topics within wider remanufacturing research, the aviation-purpose parts recovery work cluster (disassembly operations and disassembled parts’ arrangements) is circled in the dashed black frame in Fig. 1 [ 23 ]. The general recovery and reuse procedures (disassembly and dismantling) are placed in the green zone.…”

Cost Modelling for Recycling Fiber-Reinforced Composites: State-of-the-Art and Future Research

“…LCA focuses on the entire life cycle of a product or a process, starting from the raw materials and ending with the disposal stage. Numerous studies adopting the LCA approach were conducted to evaluate the recycling of composites in terms of energy and environmental impact and predicted a promising future throughout their life-cycle both during application and recycling [ 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ].…”

“…The CBA of recycling glazing was based on the general recycling scheme of ELV materials, which made the study convenient to reproduce the results on other non-metallic materials including fiber-reinforced composites. Regarding end-of-life aircrafts, Zhao et al (2020) [ 57 ] have developed an economic indicator that can help end-of-life recyclers with making a decision on the type of disposal scenario to adopt. The developed indicator is the ratio of the difference of salvage value (after the recycling process) and the residual value of an aircraft over the costs incurred for dismantling and recycling processes.…”

Quantifying the Economic Benefits of Using Erosion Protective Coatings in a Low-Pressure Compressor (Aero-Engine): A Case Study Evaluation

“…Literature surveys show that the residual value of a GTE including the costs of disposal, comprising removal of associated structures, transport and recycling, is around 10% of the purchase price, although this may vary depending upon regional rates [48]. Based on the estimation of the GTE acquisition cost employed in this study, the estimated economic benefit associated with disposal of an engine is assumed to represent GBP 63,000 per annum.…”