Development of thermal insulation sandwich panels containing end-of-life vehicle (ELV) headlamp and seat waste Yee Choong Wong a,b,⇑ , Norhayati Mahyuddin a,⇑ , Asrul Mahjuddin Ressang Aminuddin a a Centre for Building, Construction & Tropical Architecture, Faculty of Built Environment, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia b Department of Architecture and Sustainable Design, Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia article info Article history: Received 9 June 2020 Revised 5 August 2020 Accepted 23 August 2020 Keywords: End-of-life vehicle waste Recycling Sandwich panel Thermal insulation Thermal conductivity Transparency test abstract Recycling automotive waste has increasingly become an alternative solution towards producing sustain- able materials given the rising issue of raw material shortages and waste management challenges at glo- bal level. The improper end-of-life vehicle (ELV) waste management poses detrimental impacts on the environment. This paper proposes a novel method to develop thermal insulation sandwich panels using ELV waste, motivated by the critical needs of creating high-performance thermal insulation for buildings. Six sandwich panels (P1-P6) of different weight and ratio of shredded ELV particles were manufactured. The sandwich panels structure was made of three layers: a core, and a glass face sheet bonded to each side. The core structure composed of Polycarbonate (PC) from headlamp lenses and polyurethane (PU) from seat, bonded using resin casting approach. Thermal conductivity of the samples was measured using guarded hot-plate apparatus. Results corroborated that thermal conductivity of ELV-based sandwich pan- els reduced remarkably compared to panel without ELVs, recorded at 15.51% reduction. Composition gives the best thermal performance was made of mixed ELV core materials of ratio 50%PC:50%PU, it has a thermal conductivity value of 0.1776 W/mK. The transparency data were obtained using Haze- gard plus haze meter. The best luminous transmittance value was exhibited by P2 (100% PC), 67.47%. The best clarity value and haze value were shown by P6 (25% PC: 75% PU), 55.13% and 52.6% respectively. ELV waste can be recycled to develop useful sustainable thermal insulation to improve thermal and opti- cal transparency performance of buildings as a substitute for conventional materials which have a rele- vance for future façade concepts. Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. ELV waste context End-of-Life vehicle (ELV) waste has incrementally become a major global issue impacting many aspects of society and economy given their non-biodegradability and expected growth of produc- tion quantity. The poor management of ELV waste has profound ramifications on the environment, human health and climate change. The aftermath is the growing ecological damages such as resource shortages and wastages, high carbon footprints and immeasurable pollutions (ECOSCO, 2019). Currently, automotive industry generates about 5% of the global industrial waste, from cars and the manufacturing plants that pro- duce them (Zorpas and Inglezakis, 2012). About 5.3 million passen- ger cars and light good vehicles weighed a total of 5.7 million tonnes were scrapped in the EU in 2017. The total weight of ELVs were peaked at 7.1 million tonnes in 2009 (Eurostat, 2020). In Asia, approximately 5 million vehicles are disposed annually (JETRO Japan Economic Report, 2006). Landfilling of ELVs is truly unsustainable, the available landfill sites worldwide are running out, the new ones cannot be located. Without a systematic separation, collection and treatment of ELV waste often leads to further contamination with other types of waste categories when it is openly dumped (Salem, 2008). ELV recycling level worldwide remains lacklustre because of the diffi- culties in processing and lack of incentives (Nikles and Farahat, 2005). Substantial quantities of valuable parts and components end up downcycled or even worse accumulated as debris in nat- ural habitats due to a desynchronisation between automakers and ELV recyclers. The most downcycled parts are accessories, electrical and electronic components, and engines (Ortego et al., 2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.08.036 0956-053X/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: wongyc@utar.edu.my, ycwong82@gmail.com (Y.C. Wong), hayati@um.edu.my (N. Mahyuddin), asrulmahjuddin@um.edu.my (A.M.R. Aminuddin). Waste Management 118 (2020) 402–415 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Waste Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman