Environmentally Conscious

Design & Manufacturing

Class 18: Recycle

Prof. S. M. Pandit
Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)
Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:1
 Agenda

• Definition of recycling
• Hierarchy of recycling
• Design for recycling
• Recycling metals, plastics & forest products
• Economics

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:2
 Definition of Recycling

American Automobile Manufacturers Association’s

definition

A series of activities, including collection, separation,

and processing, by which products or other materials
are recovered from or otherwise diverted from the
solid waste stream for use in the form of raw materials
in the manufacture of new products.

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:3
 Some Myths - 1

• Recycling should pay for itself

- Bias in data collected, and the inability to
recognize large scale impact has led to
reports of “expensive recycling”
- $200 of energy is saved per ton of material
recycled

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:4
 Some Myths - 2
• Environmental impacts of manufacturing are
included in the products
- Cost = function of:
» supply & demand
» governmental policy
» problems with assigning cost

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:5
Life Cycle of a Product

Source: Bishop, “Pollution Prevention: Fundamentals and Practice”

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:6
 Recycling World
• Categories:
- Portable high value (computers, auto parts)
- Metals
- Plastics
- Paper
- Chemicals & glass
- Food waste
- Used equipment
- Building material

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:7
Typical Value for Vehicles

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:8
Hierarchy of Recycling Options

Source: Bishop, “Pollution Prevention:

Fundamentals and Practice”

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:9
 Steps of Recycling

For remanufacture and reuse:

• Disassembly
• Cleaning
• Sorting and inspection
• Part renewal
• Re-assembly

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:10
Steps of Recycling (cont.)
For material recycling:

• Separation
Discrete subassemblies /
joining techniques

• Sorting
Group or classify

• Reprocessing technology

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:11
Possible Separation for Materials

Source: Bishop, “Pollution Prevention:

Fundamentals and Practice”

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:12
Example: Polymer Recycling

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:13
 Design for Recycling

Multiple objectives

• Minimize variety of materials &

components
• Avoid use of toxic materials
• Ease of disassembly of dissimilar
materials

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:14
 Disassembly

• Design for Disassembly (DFD)

• Ease of Disassembly
- Preferred design: snap-fit, pop-in, pop-out, bolted
or screwed components
- Difficult design: welded, adhesive, threaded
connections

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:15
 Disassembly (cont.)
• Simplified Design
- Reduce the number and types of parts
- Reduce product complexity
• Modularity Design
• Material Selection
- Facilitate identification of materials (e.g. Marking plastics)
- Use fewer types of materials
- Use similar or compatible materials

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:16
 Disassembly (cont.)
• Non-Destructive Disassembly (NDD)
- Minimize the destruction of the product
- Maximize the potential of material resource and
sub-component reuse
• Destructive Disassembly (DD)
- Destroy one or more components so that the others
can be disassembled
- Save more expensive components
- Recycle materials
Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)
Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:17
 Disassembly (cont.)
• Disassembly Strategy
- Analyze feasibility of part reuse and materials recovery
- Generate optimal disassembly sequence
- Disassembly optimization (Lower disassembly cost,
higher rate of component reuse, higher rate of material
recycling, etc.)

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:18
 Recycling Metals
• Mixed metals (plating) - expensive
• Pure metals - very inexpensive
• Separation techniques:
- Manual
- Automated magnetic separation
- Chemical separation
» Pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy,
electrometallurgy

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:19
 Recycling Plastics
• Thermoplastics - easy
- Polyethylene terepthalate, polyvinyl chloride,
low density polyethylene, polypropylene

• Thermoset plastics
- Phenolics, polyesters, epoxides: -
crosslinking, need pyrolysis / hydrolysis to
reduce mol. Wt.

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:20
 Recycling Rubber
Use as is
(Retreaded tired, fishing banks, etc.)

Mechanical Powdered rubber

Recycling (Block, road paving, etc.)

Reclaimed rubber
(Devulcanization by the PAN reclaiming

Feed Stock
Thermal decomposition, etc
Recycling
Energy
Recovery of heat energy
Recovery
Source: Otsuka et al., SAE 2000 world congress

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:21
Recycling Forest Products
• Paper
- Fibers get shorter with use & recycling
» White bond
» Colored bond
» newspaper
» grocery bags
» toilet paper

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:22
 Economics
• Recycling must be profitable

• Revenue from recycling:

- High value, reusable subassembly and parts
- Recycled materials and energy

• Cost incurred by recycling:

- Investments in recycling equipment
- Labor cost
- Other cost such as transportation, equipment
operating

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:23
 Economics (cont.)

Disassembly cost
Cost

Landfilling Cost

Number of Disassembly Steps

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:24
 References
• Graedel & Allenby, Industrial Ecology, 1995
• http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/index.
html
• http://doemetalsrecycle.ornl.gov/
• http://www.edf.org/pubs/reports/armythfin.html
• http://www.recycle.net/recycle/
• http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/Courseware/autorecycling/MatRecy
c.html
• http://srl.marc.gatech.edu/education/Recycle/EnergRec.
html

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:25
 Homework #6
1 How is the manufacturing economics affected by
environmental considerations? (Illustrate your answer
by using machining as an example)

2 What steps would you take in a quantitative decision

making process? What are the different tools available
in this process?

3 Compare and contrast traditional and ECDM

guidelines for material selection.

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:26
 Homework #6

Why is recycling of plastics so important for the ECDM

efforts? Give relevant statistics to support your answer.

What are the major hurdles in recycling of plastics? How

can they be overcome?

Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing (ME592)

Date: April 17, 2000 Slide:27