Customer Spotlight: ASR & Plastics

See how recycling company MATEC is processing ASR with their state-of-the-art system featuring an SSI Dual-Shear^® and Uni-Shear^® shredders.

Worldwide, approximately 50 million end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) leave the roads each year, most of which are recycled. When ELVs are recycled, they are dismantled and shredded with the intent of capturing recyclable materials like steel and aluminum. Liberating and separating the materials requires processing the vehicles in a rotary shredder or a highspeed hammermill.

Once the broken down and the recycler has removed the large pieces of metal and plastic, they are left with a debris that is either too small or irregularly shaped to capture. This residual byproduct is known as Automotive Shredder Residue or ASR. Due to its size and highly varied nature, ASR is challenging to recycle and has historically been relegated to landfills. Due increased costs of landfilling and a global trend towards circular economies, discarding ASR is becoming an increasingly unpopular option.

A pile of unprocessed auto shredder residue (ASR).

So, what exactly is ASR and what can we do with it?

ASR can account for as much as 15% of the weight of each recycled vehicle and is a made up of a variety of materials that are typically categorized into two groups: a coarse fraction and a fine fraction. The coarse faction is a mixture of rubber, foam, plastics, and fibers while the fine fraction consists of metals, glass, residual plastics, and dust. The metal content regularly accounts for 25-30% of the total weight of ASR and is rich in high value elements like copper and aluminum.

ASR requires special equipment to properly liberate, separate, and recover these metals. The remaining "fluff" after metal recovery can be turned into refuse derived fuel (RDF). This multi-focused approach diverts all ASR from the landfill. This is precisely what Japanese recycler and materials company, MATEC is doing.

“All shredder dust goes to a controlled landfill,” explains Kousuke Mitsu, Executive Officer and Branch Manager at MATEC, “but since we built this facility, we are stopping [ASR] from going to the landfill. Instead, we recycle it as material.”

MATEC is Hokkaido’s largest ELV recycler and encounters a significant amount of ASR. Address this they built a new system to process the ASR generated from their six auto-shredder facilities.

Auto shredder residue (ASR) after processing is turned into fluff refuse derived fuel (RDF).

How exactly is MATEC stopping the flow of ASR to the landfill?

Turning ASR from a waste product into a viable business depended on the MATEC’s ability to shred and grind large volumes of ASR while maintaining a small, uniform, and well liberated particle size. To accomplish this, MATEC opted to incorporate shredders from American shredder manufacturer SSI Shredding Systems, Inc. into their system. SSI is known for their custom shredding systems and early involvement in the science of ASR shredding.  MATEC’s new state-of-the-art facility shows their desire recycle ASR.

“When it comes to recycling, we will do whatever it takes to resolve troubles. That is our style,” says Mitsu.

To maximize results, MATEC pre-shreds their ASR using an SSI M100SD two-shaft shredder before feeding it through two of SSI’s high-capacity rotary grinders, the SR900 Uni-Shear. While pre-shredding is not required to process ASR, it does greatly improve the efficiency and thruput rate of the rotary grinders.

“I believe that SSI's unique approach of combining shredding technologies allows us to build shredders that are tough enough to process these materials while maintaining efficient processing,” says Rich Ellis, Sales Manager of SSI’s Asia Market Department.

After grinding and liberating, the next step is sorting. Material is first passed under a magnetic separator to remove ferrous metals, followed by eddy current and sensor-based separators to extract and sort non-ferrous metals like copper, aluminum, and stainless steel. The remainder is then processed through screening and density separation equipment to remove any of the residual fine fraction and optimize the quality of the cleaned fluff. The fluff is now ready to be used as fuel.

From left to right, Dual-Shear^® M100 two-shaft shredder, Uni-Shear^® SR900 one-shaft industrial shredder x2.

The remaining fine fraction can be passed through the system multiple times for maximum metals recovery.

MATEC’s motivation to create value from their waste stems from the Japanese principle of mottainai, a phrase literally translated as, “don’t be wasteful.” However, the concept of mottainai is much deeper than that, it represents the appreciation and recognition of the intrinsic value of things. When applied to ASR, MATEC’s mottainai perspective drives them to extract the maximum value from the shredder dust and keep it from being thrown away.

MATEC wants to take their mission a step further by not only stopping the flow of ASR to their landfills but also exhuming and processing the ASR that has already been discarded.

Put simply, “we want to eliminate waste,” concludes Mitsu.

In the ongoing pursuit of sustainable practices within the automotive industry, effective management of ASR remains crucial. MATEC's commitment to innovative recycling solutions, coupled with collaborations with industry leaders like SSI Shredding Systems, Inc., is driving forward a greener, more environmentally conscious future.