The proportion of electronic components in motor vehicles that contain precious and critical metals has been increasing for years – and so have end-of-life vehicles (ELV) that have to be treated as waste. End-of-life vehicles are usually shredded after pollutant removal and partial dismantling of spare parts. A targeted separation of components that contain relevant amounts of critical or valuable metals for the purpose of material recycling is usually not carried out, although valuable materials could be recovered in this way.
Within the CRM ELV project, researchers investigated the economic viability of dismantling electronic components from end-of-life vehicles that are suitable for recycling. Important factors for this evaluation are the dismantling time, the labour and the logistics costs for the economic potential of recovering valuable and critical metals from end-of-life vehicles. The researchers have prepared the results in the form of learning materials for the target group of ELV recyclers.
