Size Reduction and Material Separation Technologies for the Recovery of Automotive Interior Trim ABS and PP Plastics from Dismantled End-of-Life Vehicles: Preliminary Research into Continuous Processing

The life-cycle benefits of plastics in automotive applications are significant and continue to expand. Achieving cost-effective recycling of interior plastic components obtained from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) remains a formidable technical and economic challenge worldwide. The American Plastics Council (APC) has pioneered large-scale process development work toward advancing environmentally and economically sound recovery technologies for plastics from ELVs. Groundbreaking studies have focused on the recovery of ABS and PP interior trim plastics. A combination of dry and wet processing of over 50,000 pounds of interior trim parts obtained through selective dismantling has been completed and streams of ABS and PP isolated. This work included the evaluation of fast mid-infrared plastics ID technology to facilitate the separation and purification process. Both sorted and unsorted trim was processed. The overall program objective was to obtain both of these recovered plastics in acceptable form for possible reuse in automotive or other applications. Detailed information on process equipment and plant design along with process strategies and detailed material balance data is presented. This work quantified the limitations of density separation to achieve clean streams of unfilled PP, filled PP, and unfilled ABS interior trim plastics from end-of-life vehicles.