Automobile Shredder Residues in Italy: Characterization and valorization opportunities S. Fiore ⇑ , B. Ruffino, M.C. Zanetti DIATI, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy article info Article history: Received 16 November 2011 Accepted 27 March 2012 Available online 21 April 2012 Keywords: End of Life Vehicles (ELVs) Automobile Shredder Residue (ASR) Car fluff Recovery Recycling abstract At the moment Automobile Shredder Residue (ASR) is usually landfilled worldwide, but European draft Directive 2000/53/CE forces the development of alternative solutions, stating the 95%-wt recovery of an End of Life Vehicle (ELV) weight to be fulfilled by 2015. This work describes two industrial tests, each involving 250–300 t of ELVs, in which different pre-shredding operations were performed. The produced ASR materials underwent an extended charac- terization and some post-shredding processes, consisting of dimensional, magnetic, electrostatic and densimetric separation phases, were tested on laboratory scale, having as main purpose the enhancement of ASR recovery/recycling and the minimization of the landfilled fraction. The gathered results show that accurate depollution and dismantling operations are mandatory to obtain a high quality ASR material which may be recycled/recovered and partially landfilled according to the actual European Union regulations, with particular concern for Lower Heating Value (LHV), heavy metals content and Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) as critical parameters. Moreover post-shredding technical solutions foreseeing minimum economic and engineering efforts, therefore realizable in com- mon European ELVs shredding plants, may lead to multi-purposed (material recovery and thermal valo- rization) opportunities for ASR reuse/recovery. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The shortening of autovehicles average life (currently estimated equal to about 10–12 years in European Union, EU) (EU Parliament, 2007; Eurostat, 2009a) produced in the last 15 years an impressive enhancement of End of Life Vehicles (ELVs) amount. At present about 12 M of ELVs (the 75% coming from Germany, UK, France, Spain and Italy) are involved each year in the EU (EU Parliament, 2007; Eurostat, 2009a; Rossetti et al., 2006), 15 M in the United States (EPA, 2006), and more than 4 M in Japan and Korea (Kim and Joung, 2004; Sakai and Noma, 2007), leading to about 50 M/y of ELVs in the world (Jody and Daniels, 2006). Although it should be considered that the export of second-hand cars before they reach their end of life is an important feature of the international car market, resulting in a longer life of the circulating vehicles. Moreover in several EU Countries a relevant difference between deregistered vehicles and scrapped ELVs is observed, because a sig- nificant number of vehicles are garaged or abandoned or scrapped by unlicensed operators. The shredding of an ELV, whose total weight changes from 1.1 to 1.4 t considering European, Japanese or US manufacturers (Ferrao and Amaral, 2006a), has the primary goal of ferrous metals recovery (65–70%-wt of a vehicle total weight, depending on ELV’s age), usually sold to secondary fusion foundries. Pre-shredding operations, consisting in depollution (removal of hazardous com- ponents, i.e. battery, fluids, oil, LPG tanks, that account for about the 3%-wt of a ELV) and recyclable components dismantling (tires and alloy wheels are usually disconnected, sometimes also fuel tanks, bumpers and windscreens, making in total for the 8–10%- wt of a vehicle), leave behind an heterogeneous material defined Automobile Shredder Residue (ASR) or car fluff (Nourredine, 2007), which counts for about the 20–25% of a vehicle total weight. Actually EU-production of fluff is estimated to be in the order of 2.4 Mt/y, against a total amount of hazardous wastes of more than 97 Mt/y (Eurostat, 2009b). This trend is destined to dramatically increase, because vehicles composition changes affects both qual- ity and quantity of ASR: in the last decades automotive manufac- turers were inclined to deplete vehicles fuel consumption by enhancing the fraction of light components and materials (Ferrao and Amaral, 2006a; Passarini et al., 2012). ASR is generally made of about 20–30%-wt of plastic (rigid, polyurethane foam – PUF, textiles), 15–20%-wt of rubber (simple, textile/metal reinforced), 20–40%-wt of paper and wood, and of about 10%-wt of not combustible materials (i.e. inerts, such as glass, paint, soil) and metals (magnetic, non-magnetic and PVC wrapped wires) (Kim and Joung, 2004; Lanoir et al., 1997; Mirabile et al., 2002; Forton et al., 2006). 0956-053X/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2012.03.026 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0110907613; fax: +39 0110907699. E-mail address: silvia.fiore@polito.it (S. Fiore). Waste Management 32 (2012) 1548–1559 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Waste Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman