The car manufacturer Audi has just presented its new MaterialLoop project aimed at the circular economy, it provides for the reuse of post-consumer recycled materials taken from customer vehicles at the end of their lifecycle.
Together with 15 partners from the research, recycling, and supplier sectors, the German automotive brand is looking into reuse those resources for the production of new cars.
A loss of quality in materials resulting from the recycling process, is to be avoided.
Up to now, very few of the materials used in the production of new vehicles are recovered from old cars. Steel, for example, usually ends up as structural steel after end-of-life vehicle recycling.
In an initial testing phase, 100 vehicles were dismantled and thanks to the targeted disassembly of individual components alone enabled the retention of high-quality secondary materials. After disassembly, the remaining car bodies were shredded and sorted into material groups comprising steel, aluminum, plastic, and glass, in cooperation with the partner companies.
Initial analyses showed that much of the scrap steel recycled from the MaterialLoop project can be used for the most demanding structural components of future models.
Besides the technical feasibility of returning materials in the supply chain, Audi improving future generations of vehicles’ ability to be recycled is also in focus.
Audi has, working with the Volkswagen Group, developed a guide for suppliers that explains with which plastic parts can be designed in a way that further increases the rate of recycling in automotive production.
Audi also wants to steadily increase the share of recyclates in its fleet over the coming years, wherever it is technically possible and makes economic and ecological sense.
To this end, began gathering knowledge on the recycling of used automotive glass. Car windows that are beyond repair are broken up into small pieces and then sorted. The resulting glass granulate is melted down and turned into new plate glass, already used in the production of the Q4 e-tron.
Mixed automotive plastic waste is also recycled through a chemical recycling process and reused for mass production of the Audi Q8 e- tron.

Source and image: audi-mediacenter.com

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