A new recycling process using advanced lasers to improve automotive scrap sorting can help bring environmentally friendly cars and trucks to market, the Auto Aluminum Alliance, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy, said Wednesday. By employing lasers to identify and recover metals from scrapped vehicles, researchers have shown they can separate cast from wrought alloys, and can separate wrought alloys from each other. The technique is inexpensive enough to be commercialized, the researchers said. The announcement is a potential boon to automakers and suppliers since this advanced recycling process promises to recover greater quantities of aluminum from scrapped vehicles. This could allow greater use of either recycled or primary automotive aluminum, which weigh less than steel.
Lighter vehicles made with aluminum get higher gas mileage and produce fewer emissions.
For the 2001 model year, aluminum passed plastics to become the third most used material in cars and trucks. Almost 90 percent of automotive aluminum today is recovered and recycled. While this aluminum represents less than 10 percent of the average motor vehicle by weight, it already accounts for about half of the vehicle's value as scrap. The recovered aluminum is then recycled into castings. But the new techniques will enable us to separate cast aluminum from wrought and even differentiate between wrought alloys.