Scarce Metals in Conventional Passenger Vehicles and End-of-Life Vehicle Shredder Output

Abstract

Concurrent with the demand for cleaner, lighter, and more efficient vehicles, many scarce metals (SMs) are used in passenger vehicles because of their unique physical and chemical properties. To explore the recycling potential of these metals, it is important to understand their distribution in the vehicles as well as their fate at the vehicles' end-of-life. However, this information remains very scattered and sparse. In this paper, we present a study investigating the distribution of 31 SMs in selected electrical and electronic (EE) components of conventional passenger vehicles and in the end-of-life vehicle shredder fractions from a shredder plant in Switzerland. The results of the chemical analyses show that the mass fractions of Co, Sn, Sr, Ta, Y, and Zr were dominant with >20,000 g/t in the selected EE components and Ag, Ga, Mo, Sb, Sn, Sr, and Zr with >50 g/t in the analyzed shredder fractions. The largest masses of 17 SMs were found in the shredder light fraction, which is incinerated in municipal waste treatment plants mainly in Switzerland; thus, these SMs are currently not recovered. The SM mass fractions in both the EE components and the shredder fractions were projected to their total masses in 100 hypothetical midrange passenger vehicles. The resulting mass balance showed a mismatch of >50% for 23 metals, which indicates other important SM sources such as alloys.

Quantitative analysis of precious metals in automotive shredder residue/combustion residue via EDX fluorescence spectrometry

“…While the first study [32] was restricted to two particular models of vehicles manufactured in 1998 and 2002, the second [33] did not analyse all shredder fractions. While, a very recent study reviled that the distribution of 31 SM in selected EE components of conventional passenger vehicles and in the ELV shredder fractions from a shredder plant in Switzerland [34,35]. The measured mass fractions of 31 SM in the 17 EE components cover a wide range from 0.4 to 380,000 g/t.…”

Waste prevention for sustainable resource and waste management

“…In addition to their levels of toxicity, the need to develop resource recovery methods has become more important because electric devices and next-generation vehicles (such as HEVs and EVs) are becoming increasingly popular. The amount of scarce metals contained in an ELV has been quantified using various approaches, including dismantling surveys [107,[109][110][111][112][113][114][115].…”

Automotive shredder residue (ASR) management: An overview

“…On this basis, to achieve the EU-Directive targets dictated for implementation by 2015, additional recycling and recovery will be required, improving both recovery and recycling of materials and bulky parts separated during dismantling process (i.e. bumpers, dashboards, cushions) and size-reduced materials, resulting from shredding process (Weiß et al, 2003;Nitta and Ito, 2013;Buekens and Zhou, 2014;Farzana et al, 2014;Sawyer-Beaulieu and Tam, 2015;Widmer et al, 2015).…”