Separation of Non-ferrous Fractions of Shredded End-of-life Vehicles for Valorising its Alloys

Worldwide the end-of-life vehicles (ELV) generate millions of tons of waste, requiring an adequate and efficient management. The non-ferrous fraction contains essentially aluminium, magnesium and copper alloys, being valorised by metallurgical processors to obtain new metals and alloys. However, most of the recovered metals are downcycled, as is the case of aluminium where the recycled products are essentially used to produce less purity casting alloys. New or improved separation technologies are therefore necessary in order to allow an accurate separation of alloys or alloy groups, increasing the value of the non-ferrous streams. In this paper, the composition of the non-ferrous fractions of ELV shredders are assessed with particular relevance for the aluminium and magnesium alloys. Essentially, the main cast and wrought alloys are characterized and their markets and applications are discussed. Based on waste composition, several physical separation and sorting technologies can be applied to improve the products quality, which are here depicted and discussed. Physical processing includes operations such as eddy current and heavy media separations. For sorting alloys contained in the non-ferrous stream, other sensor-based technologies are being developed, such as electromagnetic sensing and novel laser induced breakdown spectroscopy systems, constituting an important contribution for boosting the non-ferrous metals recycling rates.