SORTING OF ALUMINUM AND ITS ALLOYS WITHIN THE EUROPEAN AUTOMOBILE RECYCLING

www.ifa.rwth-aachen.de In Europe the automobile recycling is regulated by law. Current legislation requires that by the year 2015, eighty five w.-t. % of the materials from end-of life vehicles (ELV) have to be materially recycled. Up to 5 w.-t. % may be disposed of and for 10 w.-t. % of the materials a thermal utilization is allowed. After pretreating and dismantling the shell of the ELV passes over the shredder which liberates the remaining material for separation. The so called SLF (shredder light fraction) is sucked off by air classification. Magnetic separation takes off the iron and the steel fraction. This fraction along the SLF and the NMSF (nonmagnetic metal shredder fraction) are the products from a typical shredder pant. There are still some open questions that remain unanswered regarding the usability of some fractions. The processing of the so called SLF (Shredder light fraction) which is about 25 w.-t. % in ELV´s, has not been satisfactorily clarified. For the sorting of the NMSF (nonmagnetic metal shredder fraction) into aluminum, magnesium, stainless steal, copper, brass, zinc and other fractions several options exist. This paper analyses the difficulties of the automobile recycling industry in Europe to fulfill the demands of legislation. Furthermore, the current innovative approaches for recycling are described and the growing usage of aluminum in automobiles is pointed out. The potential of automatic picking technology with regard to the recycling of aluminum and different aluminum alloys is described in detail. This new technology provides a wide range of applications to the automobile recycling industry