A machine that moulds scrap aluminium into automotive parts could help speed up production of electric vehicles while cutting down the industry's dependence on aluminium mining and extraction.
A machine that can transform scrap aluminium directly into vehicle parts for the automotive industry could boost the supply of the metal available for new electric vehicles without the energy use and carbon emissions associated with extracting and purifying its ore.
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| Car parts can be moulded directly from recycled aluminium Shutterstock / Eugene_Photo |
Aluminium is extensively used and recycled in automotive manufacturing because it is lightweight, but the industry’s surging demand for the metal still requires additional mining and processing. “When you don’t have to mine and refine primary aluminium out of the ground, those are huge energy and emission savings right there,” says Scott Whalen at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.
To reuse aluminium, manufacturers typically remake scrap aluminium into cylindrical blocks that get preheated to temperatures over 550°C (1022°F) for up to 24 hours. That step helps to dissolve clusters of other metal impurities and distribute them uniformly throughout the aluminium before creating new automotive parts. Manufacturers also usually add new aluminium to the molten scrap to further dilute the impurities.
To eliminate the need for both the hours-long heating process and new aluminium, Whalen and his colleagues worked with Magna International, a global automotive parts manufacturer based in Canada, to develop the Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE) machine. With ShAPE, each scrap aluminium bar is pushed through a small opening in a rotating machine tool, which generates friction and heat to soften the metal. This thoroughly mixes and evenly distributes the impurities.
“The trick is, can the aluminium alloy be put into a car and perform the same way without any further heat treatment?” says Sumanth Shankar at McMaster University in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the study. “And that’s the innovation here, because everything you do to the alloy has a carbon footprint.”
The latest versions of the machine can reshape aluminium into circular, square and trapezoidal components such as door beams or rail sections for supporting vehicle engines and batteries. These components act as the reinforced structural “backbone” bearing much of the weight in vehicles, says Aldo Van Gelder at Magna International. Magna manufactures vehicle parts for 59 major automakers around the world.
“Internally, we generate a certain amount of aluminium scrap, and so by using this process we can go further along that goal toward achieving a circular economy,” says Van Gelder.
The number of such aluminium components is only expected to increase as more vehicles go electric, says Massimo Di Ciano, also at Magna International. For example, mid-size sedan battery pack structures are expected to be aluminium intensive.
Whalen and his team are currently testing if the machine can handle even higher-strength aluminium alloys that could form the battery enclosures for electric vehicles.
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