Can plastics from end-of-life vehicles be managed in a sustainable way?

Plastic from end-of-life vehicles (ELVP) are currently managed in European Union without any attention to polymer recovery. The study analyses novel treatments of sorting, dissolution/precipitation, extrusion, catalytic pyrolysis, and plastic upgrading, which could contribute to define a sustainable ELVP management scheme. The environmental performances of each of these treatments have been quantified by an attributional Life Cycle Assessment, allowing to compare a possible innovative recycling scheme with that of the European currently adopted options. The new scheme greatly enhances ELVP management performances, by hugely increasing annual amounts of polymers sent to recycling (from 26 kt/y up to 509 kt/y), drastically decreasing residues to be sent to combustion or landfill (from 984 kt/y down to 232 kt/y), and improving the impact of main environmental categories. Carcinogens, Non-Carcinogens, Global Warming and Non-Renewable Energy reduce of 138%, 100%, 42% and 114%, with reference to the current scenario. These promising results are mainly related to the utilisation of a dissolution/precipitation process (CreaSolve), whose introduction could allow recovering large part of target polymers (PE and PP). The recovery of PE in fuel tanks by a supercritical extrusion process (Extruclean) and the treatment of residues and non-target polymers by a catalytic pyrolysis process also contribute to improve the environmental performances. A sensitivity analysis quantifies the role of some key parameters, indicating that the results could be affected by energy consumption of dissolution/precipitation process, oil yield of catalytic pyrolysis treatment, but also by the substitutability factor utilised to quantify the avoided burdens associated to the recycled polymers. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Automated summary

The study analyzes novel treatments for end-of-life vehicle plastics, showing significant improvements in polymer recycling and waste reduction, leading to better environmental performance.