Elsevier

Waste Management

Volume 118, December 2020, Pages 402-415
Waste Management

Development of thermal insulation sandwich panels containing end-of-life vehicle (ELV) headlamp and seat waste

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.08.036Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Developed novel thermal insulation sandwich panels containing ELV waste in manufacturing plant.

  • Performed laboratory evaluations to test thermal conductivity of ELV-based sandwich panels.

  • Better thermal performance achieved for sandwich panel encapsulated with ELV PC and PU waste.

  • Evaluated transparency level of the developed sandwich panels using haze meter.

Abstract

Recycling automotive waste has increasingly become an alternative solution towards producing sustainable materials given the rising issue of raw material shortages and waste management challenges at global level. The improper end-of-life vehicle (ELV) waste management poses detrimental impacts on the environment. This paper proposes a novel method to develop thermal insulation sandwich panels using ELV waste, motivated by the critical needs of creating high-performance thermal insulation for buildings. Six sandwich panels (P1-P6) of different weight and ratio of shredded ELV particles were manufactured. The sandwich panels structure was made of three layers: a core, and a glass face sheet bonded to each side. The core structure composed of Polycarbonate (PC) from headlamp lenses and polyurethane (PU) from seat, bonded using resin casting approach. Thermal conductivity of the samples was measured using guarded hot-plate apparatus. Results corroborated that thermal conductivity of ELV-based sandwich panels reduced remarkably compared to panel without ELVs, recorded at 15.51% reduction. Composition gives the best thermal performance was made of mixed ELV core materials of ratio 50%PC:50%PU, it has a thermal conductivity value of 0.1776 W/mK. The transparency data were obtained using Haze-gard plus haze meter. The best luminous transmittance value was exhibited by P2 (100% PC), 67.47%. The best clarity value and haze value were shown by P6 (25% PC: 75% PU), 55.13% and 52.6% respectively. ELV waste can be recycled to develop useful sustainable thermal insulation to improve thermal and optical transparency performance of buildings as a substitute for conventional materials which have a relevance for future façade concepts.

Introduction

End-of-Life vehicle (ELV) waste has incrementally become a major global issue impacting many aspects of society and economy given their non-biodegradability and expected growth of production quantity. The poor management of ELV waste has profound ramifications on the environment, human health and climate change. The aftermath is the growing ecological damages such as resource shortages and wastages, high carbon footprints and immeasurable pollutions (ECOSCO, 2019).

Currently, automotive industry generates about 5% of the global industrial waste, from cars and the manufacturing plants that produce them (Zorpas and Inglezakis, 2012). About 5.3 million passenger cars and light good vehicles weighed a total of 5.7 million tonnes were scrapped in the EU in 2017. The total weight of ELVs were peaked at 7.1 million tonnes in 2009 (Eurostat, 2020). In Asia, approximately 5 million vehicles are disposed annually (JETRO Japan Economic Report, 2006).

Landfilling of ELVs is truly unsustainable, the available landfill sites worldwide are running out, the new ones cannot be located. Without a systematic separation, collection and treatment of ELV waste often leads to further contamination with other types of waste categories when it is openly dumped (Salem, 2008). ELV recycling level worldwide remains lacklustre because of the difficulties in processing and lack of incentives (Nikles and Farahat, 2005). Substantial quantities of valuable parts and components end up downcycled or even worse accumulated as debris in natural habitats due to a desynchronisation between automakers and ELV recyclers. The most downcycled parts are accessories, electrical and electronic components, and engines (Ortego et al., 2018).

In recent years, EU implemented ELV Directive (2000/53/EC) to regulate automotive and material manufacturers to meet specific targets, a wide range of recycling activities to tackle ELV challenges have been carried out. Sustainable waste management measures are taken by several automakers worldwide to optimise ELV recycling in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), taking responsibility for their own products. Resource efficiency programmes to recycle ELVs have been developed by several automakers to utilise recyclable car components and green parts. Re-manufacturing of used merchandise by channelling them back to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) provides vehicles production costs cutting within the automotive industry itself (Hatcher et al., 2011).

Nissan promotes the use of reusable parts under the name Nissan Green Parts. There are 31 different reusable parts that are prone to collisions, including headlamps, combination lights, and other front and back vehicle components (Nissan Environmental report, 2004). Ford has been a leader in using recycled materials in its cars. Since 2011, all seat cushions made from soy foam for vehicles built in North America have reduced the company’s yearly CO2 emissions by 20 million pounds. In 2010, Chrysler estimated the process of using recycled PU foam save 180,000 lb of foam going to landfills per year (Sanchez, 2015).

A study suggests that plastics represents the third highest in percentage by weight, approximately 7–9.3% of the average composition of an ELV weight, after ferrous metal 65.4–71% and non-ferrous metal 7–10% (Vermeulen et al., 2011). From the total shredded output of an ELV, approximately 70–75% represents ferrous fraction, 5% non-ferrous metals and the remainder 20–25% referred as automotive shredder residue (ASR). In the composition, the percentage by weight of ASR, textiles and foam represents about 27–27.2%, while plastics 19–20.2%. Due to ASR heterogenous and complex mixtures, it is currently largely landfilled (Cossu and Lai, 2015). In order to meet future ELV targets and escape fiscal penalties, plastics and composites have to be greener, more recyclable and sustainably sourced (Frost and Sullivan, 2010).

In terms of recycling technology, welding and composite materials cause difficulties in dismantling ELVs (Tian and Chen, 2014). The joint characteristics of a vehicle part can influence the valuable material losses and leads to impurities, influencing material separation practices of multi-material vehicle design (Soo et al., 2017). Numerous mechanical methods have been used to separate and recycle ASR such as polyurethane and ABS using Changing World Technologies (CWT) thermal process (Winslow and Adams, 2004). Currently, the separation of plastics that is done efficiently from ASR is not widely applied (Davies, 2012, Passariniet al., 2012). The non-ferrous fraction in a heavy and light fraction is separated using air classification, magnetic and eddy current, screening or trommel separation methods (Ferrao and Amaral, 2006, Cossu and Lai, 2015). Sink/float separation is most commonly applied in mixed plastics separation basing on density difference. Froth flotation, static hydrodynamic separation or thermo mechanical sorting have been developed (Milleret al., 2014, Hopewellet al., 2009, Vermeulenet al., 2011)

In construction industry context, initiative to utilise ELV waste for manufacturing building materials is limited. There is very little evidence suggesting that any of these are being used in construction industry and commercially available today. Part of the reasons is due to building user requirements that are difficult to meet or time consuming (Hatcheret al., 2011, Wonget al., 2018). The low recycling level can be reversed if high-value products can be generated from ELV waste (Thai et al., 2019). If the building user requirements are fully understood, the recycling of ELVs to create building products can be more effectively developed in the future (Wong et al., 2018).

Multiple waste utilisation projects have given good impacts in construction industry: Recycling, opting for low technology methods and sustainable materials that are renewable, reusable and abundant. Several authors have conducted research using agricultural wastes (Paiva et al., 2012), newspaper residue (Ng and Low, 2010), polymeric wastes (Quaranta et al., 2010), textile wastes (Dissanayake et al., 2018) in the development of building components such as sandwich panels, particle boards, and composite panels, focusing on thermal insulation performance evaluation and characterisation.

A lot of research is being carried out worldwide to study sandwich panels. Sandwich panels are made of multi-layer construction. It is usually composed of two face sheets (or skins) of rigid surface layer bonded either mechanically or chemically by a thick core. There are two groups of sandwich core materials, homogenous and structured cores (Pflug et al., 2002). A huge variety of cores can be utilised in sandwich structures from foams to structured (non-homogenous) support (Allen, 1969). The skin materials and core can vary widely, the core may be a solid filing or a honeycomb. The most common core materials are foam core, plastic honeycomb, wood core and mineral wool while face sheets are usually made of aluminum, steel, ABS, plywood, MDF and plexiglass (Kleiberit, 2020). Homogenous core material such as PU foam is widely used in the automotive industry. Structured core material such as honeycomb core is often used in aerospace industries for buckling and bending sensitive panels while corrugated core has been commonly used in headliners, cabin floor and car roofs (Pflug et al., 2002). The development of sandwich panels has been extensive in many sectors, it has many applications and come in many forms. German automaker Karmann presented a concept of sandwich panels made of aluminium foam. The technology was improved in automotive sectors such as ship building, aircraft and railway industry (Qingxian et al., 2015). Sandwich panels may be used for building external walls and interior partition walls for vertical and horizontal installations as well as roofs. It can also be used to build enclosures for industrial equipment and air conditioning devices (Izopanel, 2020).

Oliveira investigated a sustainable sandwich panel manufactured from aluminum skins encapsulated with recycled thermoplastic bottle caps core proved that the discarded bottle caps is a promising lightweight and cheap honeycomb component for structural applications (Oliveira et al., 2018). An on-field experiment conducted using the honeycomb sandwich panels inserted with chinese plywood found that the test room walls installed with chinese plywood reinforced sandwich material reduced electricity consumption by 0.17 kw compared with the conventional walls (1.07 kw) (Reengwaree et al., 2013). The PU roof sandwich panels product manufactured by BRDECO are composed of 3 layers, the face sheet layer is two dyed galvanised corrugated plates and the core is made of density 40 kg/m3 PU foam. The thermal conductivity value of 50 mm thick sandwich panel is 0.022 W/mK, it is widely used in steel structure factory building, offices and commercial buildings (Brdeco, 2020). Teknopanel produces several sandwich panels products. The 50 mm thick PU/PIR insulated sandwich wall panels made of prepainted galvanized steel inner and outer sheet has a thermal conductivity value of 0.027 W/mK while the 50 mm thick rockwool insulated sandwich wall panel has a thermal conductivity value of 0.0345 W/mK (Teknopanel, 2020).

Glass sandwich panel GSP was first developed by Iconic Skin Seele group in Germany. It is a 3-in-1 product which combines a glass, wall and insulation in one construction element as building façade material. The face sheet is a 6 mm thick pane of glass bonded on the sandwich panels. The insulating core is made of polyurethane (PU) or mineral wool (MV). The glass sandwich panel can be integrated with conventional window and façade systems for offices, public buildings and industrial buildings. The panel is also UV and weather resistant printed based on design specifications (Brucha, 2020). Vitale et al. manufactured several sandwich panels made of glass fiber and vegetable (jute) fiber composite face sheets and different cores: honeycomb cores made of glass fiber polyester composites to evaluate their thermal properties (Vitale et al., 2017). AungYong fabricated green sandwich panels by incorporating polyurethane-based foams with incorporated waste glycerol and agricultural waste residues, i.e., rice hulls as filler. The findings show that the foams increase the strength of the panels, it can be used as non-load bearing panels to construct green buildings (AungYong, 2014).

Another study by Wang et al. focused on the development of sandwich panels made of aluminium alloy face sheets and a hierarchical composite square-honeycomb sandwich core to study the vibration characteristics/performance of the sandwich structures using experimental tests under clamped-free boundary conditions. The results indicated that geometric parameters have an impact on the vibration characteristics and performance of the sandwich panels (Wang et al., 2019). Petrone et al. manufactured and tested sandwich panels consist in a three-layer composite made of recyclable pre-preg compatible foam core and two different face sheets, flax-PE foam and glass-PP foam to evaluate vibrational characteristics and the damping and mode shape ratio using roving hammer method (Petrone et al., 2014). Lisicins et al. investigated sandwich wall panels based on cellular core made of perforated steel tapes and plates from waste materials using stamping method. The proposed sandwich panels could be used as supporting or decorative structures. The thermal insulation property of the sandwich panels is improved by filling the cellular structure with insulation filler materials (Lisicins et al., 2015). Waste automotive plastic (WAP) and non-metallic waste from printed circuit boards (PCBs) were used by researchers to develop sustainable composite panels, medium density fibreboard for wide range of uses. The composite panels made of various proportions of PCBs and WAP were fabricated using hot press method (Rajagopal et al., 2017).

In Colombia, Changemakers has reported projects to recycle plastic and rubber waste to create sandwich panel by melting and pouring into a mould to produce building blocks which function like Lego pieces with the participation of whole communities in the construction of their own dwellings. Additives were added to the blocks to make them resistant to fire and earthquake resistant (Mendez, 2017).

In this study, a method to develop thermal insulation sandwich panels based on glass face sheets and sustainable core made of ELV waste was presented, as an innovative system for energy efficient building that can be applied internally and externally. Six types of sandwich panels were designed and manufactured with different weights and ratios of shredded ELV PC and PU. The developed sandwich panels were subjected to thermal conductivity testing using guarded hot-plate apparatus and transparency measurement using Haze-gard plus haze meter. This paper is organised in few sections. It begins with an introduction, the second section presents the materials and methods used to develop the sandwich panels and the laboratory testing set-up, the third section presents the results and discussion, and the fourth section presents conclusions.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

The manufacturing process to recycle ELVs to produce sandwich panels is summarised schematically in Fig. 1, it constituted of 7-step process.

  • i.

    ELV components needed in this research were selected based on their characteristic and suitability. They were collected from the local ELV recycling centres and sent to dedicated recovery plant for processing.

  • ii.

    ELV headlamp and seat components were dismantled manually to extract useful materials.

  • iii.

    Manual ELV materials separation was conducted to sort single

Results and discussion

The results of the investigated sandwich panels are presented in Fig. 5. The thermal conductivity data obtained were analysed by comparing them with the existing conventional thermal insulation materials and established sandwich panel products developed by others (Table 2).

Conclusions

This paper comprehensively describes the development of a novel method to produce thermal insulation sandwich panels using recycled PC from ELV headlamp and PU from ELV seat. It presents results of thermal performance and transparency level of the developed sandwich panels.

Six sandwich panels (P1-P6) were produced in manufacturing plant and tested in laboratory to verify the proposed development process. Steady-state laboratory tests using guarded hot-plate apparatus to measure thermal

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia University of Malaya (FP054-2017A). The authors would like to thank Dr. Siong-Kang Lim and Mr. Leong-Tatt Loh for their kind supports in setting up data acquisition of the guarded hot-plate apparatus. The assistance offered by Plasmost Enterprise Sdn. Bhd. in the transparency data acquisition is greatly appreciated. We also thank V.P. Plastics Sdn. Bhd. for the help in crushing ELV headlamps needed in this research.

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