Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

According to the news on September 1, many automakers believe that using recycled parts to "recycle" cars represents the future development trend of the automobile industry. Although the idea is creative, industry experts say it faces too many challenges to achieve.

It is estimated that each car emits about 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year, but long before the car hit the road, they are already polluting the environment: they are already consuming energy and emitting greenhouse gases in the process of refining and producing materials such as steel, rubber, plastic, glass, lithium and leather used to make cars. After being abandoned, cars rot in garbage dumps, releasing chlorofluorocarbons and producing oils and acids that can harm groundwater.

Now, scientists, environmentalists, policy makers and carmakers are exploring ideas that could change the status quo, including an industrial concept called "circular manufacturing". The idea is to make new cars by reusing recycled parts, thus breaking the traditional cycle of producing cars from scratch until they are scrapped.

The idea is so novel that there is no standard definition or even a recognized unified name. Some people call it "circular manufacturing", while others call it "circular economy" or "manufacturing in circular economy". However, circular manufacturing has become part of the European Green Agreement, which lays the foundation for new legislation that car companies need to comply with.

Although the idea is just past the conceptual stage, carmakers are already scrambling to promote the advantages of circular manufacturing. General Motors declared itself a leader in circular economy in 2020, and BMW, Ford, Toyota, Tesla and others also expressed their optimistic views on circular economy. But industry watchers warn that, for now, the main value of circular economy may be for public relations.

"this is a great opportunity for car companies to play the green card," said Richard Gregory, an economics professor at East Tennessee State University who is studying the new concept. "is what they say misleading? it's hard to say because there are no federal regulations."

The core feature of circular manufacturing (cyclicity) creates both new opportunities and troubles: it has no clear starting point, and each part of the cycle is as important as the next. While this means that there are no core issues to solve, it also means that even little-known elements of the car manufacturing process may contribute to technological improvements.

Despite the challenges, a variety of entities, from supercar start-ups in California to student programs in the Netherlands to car parts manufacturers, are scrambling to make progress in circular manufacturing.

"people think we're just talking about recycling, but the reality is far from that," said Abhishek Gupta, director of the Recycling car Initiative at the World Economic Forum. Generally speaking, the idea is to reduce the energy and materials needed to build a car. There are many ways to do this: for example, to use more wind and solar energy in the manufacturing process, or to make parts from less or recyclable materials. "by measuring the carbon and resources consumed, you can really understand the true level of recycling manufacturing," says Mr Gupta. "

It sounds simple, but a study published in 1998 by the Institute of Automotive Engineers found that American midsize cars are made up of about 20,000 parts. Greg Keoleian, the lead author of the study and now a professor at the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, says cars will only get more complex, which is definitely a huge challenge for recyclers. "it is still of great value at the end of the vehicle's useful life," he said. "

Car recyclers peel off valuable parts such as engines for reuse. The rest of the car body will be sent to scrap metal recycling companies, which usually crush the rest, but the use of mixing alloy scraps is very limited.

Take aluminum as an example. "the aluminum produced in this case is a mixture of a variety of different alloys, including as-cast alloys, which cannot be well bonded into sheets used to cover the body," said John Weritz, vice president of standards and technology at the Aluminum Association. As automakers increasingly use lightweight aluminum bodies, the demand for unmixed materials is growing, he said.

In circular manufacturing, the way to solve the classification problem is to change the design process, including the disassembly plan, so that a scrapped car can be easily split into metal, plastic, rubber and glass. Designing cars to recycle materials more easily helps liberate manufacturers from supply chain problems, and cars themselves can build their own parts supply chains.

Industry insiders say that the automotive industry has made real progress in packaging and transport materials. "We have reduced packaging waste by using reusable containers," said Kevin Bart, president of supplier Environmental Cooperation. Although the idea is not new, Toyota North America, a former director of environmental sustainability at Bart, says it has lost 6500 million pounds of cardboard and 171 million pounds of wooden boxes since 2017. saved $273 million by using recycled container parts. The organization would like to see all its members adopt this approach.

Of course, there is a "use process" between production and recycling. The goal of the cycle also includes extending the time cars spend on the road. After all, fewer new cars mean less materials and energy needed to make new cars. But there is a problem to be aware of. To some extent, keeping an old car running may be more polluting than building a new one.

"if we let gas-guzzling vehicles stay on the road for too long, we benefit materially, but not in terms of reducing carbon emissions," said Jennifer Russell, one of the co-authors of a United Nations report on the circular economy.

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