Ecotest for End-of-Life Vehicle Recycling

Achieving sustainable objectives is all about getting the right mix between legislation, economics and technology. According to ARN, for instance, recycling should not lead to unnecessary energy consumption (or the associated CO2 emissions).

Result
Weighing up the diverse factors is becoming increasingly complex. This is why ARN has teamed up with FFact to develop the Ecotest. This computational model provides clear insight into the performance of the entire chain as well as of all chain partners – not only in terms of the recycling percentage, but also costs and other environmental impacts such as CO2 emissions (also known as the CO2 footprint). The Ecotest calculations show that the ARN recycling system saves 1.7 tonnes of CO2 emissions per end-of-life vehicle. This is the equivalent of an average car’s CO2 footprint for more than 12,000 kilometres. That’s a lot of savings!

Thanks to the Ecotest, it is now also possible to calculate and compare the effects of innovations, such as the new PST plant and the sale of the different fractions that the PST Plant is going to produce. Arie de Jong, General Managing Director of ARN, is very enthusiastic about the Ecotest product. It helps ARN pursue further improvements. ARN wants to remain critical and continue optimising the overall end-of-life vehicle chain performance. The Ecotest is widely applicable and ARN is already helping the implementing agencies of two other product boards, RecyBEM and STIBAT, to analyse the recycling of, respectively, car tyres and batteries. ARN and FFact will continue to jointly roll out the Ecotest in the recycling sector.

Approach
ARN Advisory and FFact have joined forces to develop a widely applicable Ecotest. The complete end-of-life vehicle processing chain - from vehicle disassembly to shredder waste processing - was used as a test case for developing the model.