Every year up to 14 million motor vehicles cease to be roadworthy in the member states of the European Union. But for the existence of an EU-wide network of purpose-designed recycling plants, this would present a disposal problem of gigantic proportions.

There are over 220 automated vehicle recycling plants in the EU employing well over 6000 people (and over 700 world-wide), each functioning as an integrated factory, consuming worn-out vehicles at a rapid rate of up to 200 an hour. By a powerful shredding action, vehicles are processed into high-density fist-size pieces. The separated shredded ferrous scrap obtained is ideally suited to direct feeding into a steel-making furnaces. This material is of high physical and chemical quality, with a ferrous content of 98%, and is sought-after by steel-makers world-wide. In the EU alone, shredders produce over 8 million tonnes of this top-grade furnace feed annually - around a third of total world output.

Shredders originated in the late 1950s to deal with the increasing number of ELVs arising, as the old practice of hand dismantling could not keep up with even the relatively low volumes of ELVs in those days. Shredders have been steadily developed to increase efficiency, enhance the purity of the product, and especially to achieve optimum separation of the metals contained in a vehicle. Many vehicle components are made of non-ferrous metals such as copper, aluminium and zinc. In the shredding process, magnetic separation is used to remove the magnetic ferrous fraction from the other materials, leaving non-ferrous metals to pass to further stages for the segregation of one type from another. Eddy-current separators induce energy that will literally project one non-ferrous metal from another and any surrounding materials. Other high technology devices are also used for separating shredded materials.

There are over 40 media separation plants in the EU. Media separation plants employ fluids or mineral suspensions of varying specific gravity that allow selected materials to float while the others sink. Thus a succession of different media separation stages within a single plant can effectively separate materials one from another. Media separation plants currently recover around 99.5% of the non-ferrous metals from shredded vehicles and progress is being made to capture the other half percent.

Not all separated materials are of direct use, some residues are left over. There are two main types of residue: the airborne dust ('fluff') caught by the shredder dust collection system (consisting of upholstery fibres, dirt, rust, paint etc.); and the non-metallic residues separated from the recovered material streams by the media separation plant (consisting of unusable rubbers, plastics, stones etc.).The aspirated dust and the separated residues together represent about 17 to 25% of the average vehicle weight. This has been land filled, representing no more than 0.2% of total landfill waste in the EU. However, progress in media separation technology is continuing and now enables some further materials to be recovered, while the remaining combustible materials may have considerable potential as a fuel. Research and development continues in this area.

The EU's shredder and media separation infrastructure is economically self-supporting, furthermore being able to process millions of redundant cookers, washing machines and similar consumer durables which would otherwise pose a grave disposal problem.These plants provide first-grade processed materials to consumers worldwide, generating revenue for exporting countries and (as secondary materials are naturally less expensive than primary materials), offering a cost advantage to the industries that consume them. The use of secondary raw materials is highly beneficial, providing appreciable energy savings and producing less emissions. Recycling iron and steel saves 74% of energy and 86% of emissions compared with primary production. For other materials, energy savings are: 95% for aluminium, 85% for copper, 65% for lead, 60% for zinc and over 80% for plastics.

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