1 research outputs found
Scarce Metals in Conventional Passenger Vehicles and End-of-Life Vehicle Shredder Output
Concurrent
with the demand for cleaner, lighter, and more efficient
vehicles, many scarce metals (SMs) are used in passenger vehicles
because of their unique physical and chemical properties. To explore
the recycling potential of these metals, it is important to understand
their distribution in the vehicles as well as their fate at the vehicles’
end-of-life. However, this information remains very scattered and
sparse. In this paper, we present a study investigating the distribution
of 31 SMs in selected electrical and electronic (EE) components of
conventional passenger vehicles and in the end-of-life vehicle shredder
fractions from a shredder plant in Switzerland. The results of the
chemical analyses show that the mass fractions of Co, Sn, Sr, Ta,
Y, and Zr were dominant with >20 000 g/t in the selected EE components
and Ag, Ga, Mo, Sb, Sn, Sr, and Zr with >50 g/t in the analyzed
shredder
fractions. The largest masses of 17 SMs were found in the shredder
light fraction, which is incinerated in municipal waste treatment
plants mainly in Switzerland; thus, these SMs are currently not recovered.
The SM mass fractions in both the EE components and the shredder fractions
were projected to their total masses in 100 hypothetical midrange
passenger vehicles. The resulting mass balance showed a mismatch of
>50% for 23 metals, which indicates other important SM sources
such
as alloys