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Aluminium flows in vehicles: enhancing the recovery at end-of-life

  • SPECIAL FEATURE: ORIGINAL ARTICLE
  • End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Recycling
  • Published:
Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The transportation sector constitutes the major end-use market for aluminium-containing products and expectations for the future do indicate that aluminium will increase at 140 kg per vehicle. Moreover, up to 75 % aluminium recycled in Europe is used in transportation: thus, metal scrap recovered from ELVs is a key lever to act for closing material cycles. However, although the management chain of ELVs has an established procedure and aluminium scrap is usually recovered in shredding plants, a considerable fraction of the metal particles ends up in the light fraction called car fluff and is then landfilled. In this study we investigated potential of enhancing the recovery of aluminium scrap from the light fluff treatment. With this goal, the quantity of aluminium embedded in the Italian transport sector in the last 62 years was estimated, and a campaign of characterization in size and shape distribution of aluminium particles in the light fluff output has been carried out. The results estimated up to about 560,000 tons of metal are potentially recoverable from the treatment of light fluff at current operating conditions, but relevant improvements may be achieve when size and shape distribution criteria are adopt to implement eddy currents separation for a quantitative metal recovery.

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Acknowledgments

We express gratitude to Gruppo Fiori for the technical and financial support to the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Industrial Chemistry “Toso Montanari”, University of Bologna, Viale del Risorgimento 4, Bologna (BO), Italy

    Fabrizio Passarini, Luca Ciacci, Ivano Vassura & Luciano Morselli

  2. Italmetalli srl—Gruppo Fiori, Via Confortino 29, Crespellano (BO), Italy

    Alessandro Santini

Authors
  1. Fabrizio Passarini
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  2. Luca Ciacci
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  3. Alessandro Santini
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  4. Ivano Vassura
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  5. Luciano Morselli
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Correspondence to Fabrizio Passarini.

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Passarini, F., Ciacci, L., Santini, A. et al. Aluminium flows in vehicles: enhancing the recovery at end-of-life. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 16, 39–45 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-013-0175-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-013-0175-0

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