New technique to reclaim plastic from ASR

Archiv – Researchers have found a new way of separating the different types of shredded plastic parts from End-of-Live-Vehicles (ELV), In cooperation with Japanese vehicle manufacturer Toyota and German waste technology specialist Sicon, the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany’s Freising has developed the CreaSolv process.Germany | Researchers have found a new way of separating the different types of shredded plastic parts from End-of-Live Vehicles (ELV). In cooperation with Japanese vehicle manufacturer Toyota and German waste technology specialist Sicon, the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Germany’s Freising has developed the CreaSolv process.
During the recycling process, polymers land in the non-metallic shredder residue along with dust, slivers of metal and textile fluff. When compressed into granulate material, the plastic Auto Shredder Residue (ASR) is usually too indiscriminately mixed to permit any further use and is normally used as reducers in blast furnaces.
As researchers have discovered, in the future the granulated plastic could be salvaged and transformed once again into dashboards and other car parts. ’We developed a special solvent that removes a particular type of plastic from the granulate: the polyolefins used to make air filter housings, shock absorbers and side panels,’ says IVV project manager Martin Schlummer.
’While this type of polymer dissolves in the solvent, the other plastics remain in the granulate.’ The solvent is separated from the polyolefin and re-used. There is a further advantage, too: The CreaSolv process is so effective as a cleaner that scientists can also separate out any toxins with which the polymer may have come into contact during shredding. Using this technology, the overall recycling rate for ELV’s ‘€’ metals, plastics and textiles ‘€’ can be increased to over 90 percent,’ acclaims Mr Schlummer.
The researchers have already been using the idea behind CreaSolv for about a year, to recover styrene copolymers from electrical appliances In this way, the researchers can recycle about 50 percent of the high plastic content in discarded electrical appliances. Nevertheless, a great deal of development effort was necessary before it was possible to process the plastics from cars as well. ’Different polymers are used in cars than in electrical appliances, so we had to develop completely different solvents,’ says Mr Schlummer.