What Happens to a Scrap Vehicle

The Process of Car Scrapping

Vehicles arrive at a salvage yard in various ways. Vehicles may be bought at an auction or insurance; they might be abandoned or impounds. However, if you car has been smashed or damaged and an insurance company write your car off, you will need to hand it to them in order to be disposed.

If this happen, this will lead to a salvage yard in order to be stripped of the entire re-salable and usable parts. Your vehicle will be transferred to a depollution building wherein its special component such as carburetors and mercury switched will be removed and recycled. The wiper, motor oil, brake, wiper, etc will be drained and recycled as well as the tires. The fluids will be drained and recaptured to be recycled.

From depollution, this will go to the Crusher to flatten the vehicle before it shipped to its next stop, the Grinder. This grinds the cars to chunks and the separation of different materials like plastic and metals will happen. A giant magnet will separate the heavy metals and the non-ferrous metals like copper and aluminum will be separated by weight. Plastics will be suctioned off by an industrial vacuum and those remaining debris will go into landfills.

Recycling Batteries

Lead-Acid Batteries
With regards to the battery of the vehicle, those conventional lead-acid batteries will be recycled. Batteries are also built with sixty to eighty percent recycled material making it the most recycled good worldwide and more than 99 percent of it goes to recycling plants. Also, some strict regulation in EU, UK and US drive up the cost of recycling and relocate recycling work to some developing countries where there is a lax of environmental codes.

Electric Vehicle Batteries
There are two types of electric vehicle batteries; the lithium ion battery and nickel metal hydride. A lot of recyclers are slicing batteries in order for them to get cobalt, copper, lithium carbonate and nickel. When it comes to recycling lithium-ion batteries, you have to remember that these types of batteries must be frozen first at a very low temperature. EV batteries can be 70 to 100 percent recyclable, but still depending on the type.

Defining Slag

Slag is EV battery’s any by-product that cannot be utilized or will no longer be valuable in new batteries. A slag is also used in order to strengthen some concrete mixtures which result to the reduced demand in global cement.

Nowadays, those engines that are not reused have a scrap value because of their metal with high grade. The radiators, condensers, transmissions and other parts are actually made of aluminum and some other valuable materials.

Currently, over three-quarters of the content of a scrapped vehicle is being reused. In USA, there are almost 12 million cars that are recycled, 1.65 million in China. 2.1 million in UK and 8.5 million vehicles are recycled in EU.

Scrapping vehicles is really economical and it has a lot of positive impacts in the industry today. In fact, car plastic recycling can save an estimated amount of twenty-four million oil barrels every year in just US alone.