Reuse of vehicles containing POP-PBDEs

Reuse of vehicles containing POP-PBDEs

Since the use of POP-PBDEs ended in Europe or Japan before year 2000, a large share of these vehicles are not in operation anymore in industrial countries but have reached end-of-life or have been exported to developing countries including those in transition economy. Therefore the reuse sector for vehicles in industrial countries in these regions is not impacted significantly by POP-PBDEs (Morf et al., 2003). Some special care has to be taken for vehicles in/from North America where c-PentaBDE and c-OctaBDE was used until 2004 with the largest POP-PBDE use volume (see chapter 2).

In developing countries, where vehicles are used for decades, many cars from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are still in operation (POP-PBDE Inventory Guidance 2012). In these regions POP-PBDEs in the transport sector could be of particular relevance. Human exposure, particularly taxi drivers or other professional drivers, to POP-PBDEs from POP-PBDE-containing vehicles could be relevant, especially for aged vehicles with bridal PUR foam considering results of exposure studies from United States (Imm et al., 2009; Stapleton et al., 2008, Betts, 2003). Therefore the reuse of vehicles containing POP-PBDEs is not recommended.

2. Treatment and recycling of end-of-life vehicles

Normally the materials containing POP-PBDEs end up in the ASR fraction when processing ELVs (see Figure 5-1). The ASR is normally further separated into a “light ASR” and a “heavy ASR” where the PUR foam is contained in the light ASR fraction and makes up 4% to 20% of this fraction (see Figure 5-2).

In industrial countries the light shredder residues from ELVs are normally not recycled but subject to thermal destruction/energy recovery (see chapter 7) or disposal in landfills (see chapter 8 and annex 3) (Cossu and Lal, 2015).

Some industrial countries have introduced legislation requiring recycling quotas for ELVs (and other materials) (Sakai e al., 2014), e.g. the Japanese Government introduced the Law on Recycling of ELVs (ELV Recycling Law) in 2002, which requires manufacturers to retrieve CFCs, airbags, and ASR from ELVs and to properly recycle the remaining materials. Europe has introduced the ELV Directive2000/53/EC requiring reuse and recovery to a minimum of 95% and a reuse and recycling to minimum of85% from 2015 onwards (European Commission, 2013c). More recently, some facilities recycle the polymer fractions as described below.

1. Dismantling and depollution of the vehicle

This depollution step offers the option to remove POP-PBDE-containing materials for further treatment. These materials could be separated using bromine screening technologies (see section 3.6), particularly if the non-impacted polymers are further considered for material recycling.

In the dismantling step, reusable and recyclable components are removed, with special emphasis on components with a sufficient market value or containing valuable materials (e.g. catalytic converters). Table 5-1 lists parts of an ELV that can easily be recycled, indicating also possible end products.

In general, 5–35% of an ELV’s mass can be removed for reuse or recycling, depending on the age of the ELV, the market value of the removed parts, and the labour costs to remove these parts (Vermeulen et al., 2011). A large difference exists between, for instance, European countries, where only about 5–10% of an ELV’s mass is removed during dismantling, and South Korea, where up to 35% of an ELV’s mass is removed during this stage (Ferrãoet al., 2006; Joung et al., 2007; Forton et al., 2006). This demonstrates the large potential of the dismantling step as a BEP measure.

Exposure to pollutants (including POP-PBDEs) should be minimised by appropriate procedures (e.g. with low dust generation) and the use of appropriate personal protection equipment.

Table 5‑5: Parts that can be recycled from ELVs

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