Minimizing the environmental impact of vehicles end of life glass recycling

Piero Ercole, Latif Mahjoob, Lodovico Ramon, Paolo Bertuzzi, SASIL S.p.A.

The objective of this study is to develop a new process for recovering both glass and PVB, from car windscreens rejected during production and/or from the Vehicles End of Life program. This process can also be associated with post consumer plastics available, in significant percentages, in glass container cullet city collections depending on the total polymer availability that, for economic reasons, must be at least 5.000tons/year. As is known plastics, and in particular PVB, are strong reducing agents and, to avoid problems during the melting of container glass, must be removed from the cullet before it is recycled. To achieve these objectives, the windscreens are crushed to facilitate the polymer separation and then ground in special mills to reduce the glass size to the level of silica sand (0.1 – 0.8mm). The PVB that, as said before, can be blended or not with other plastics, is separated from glass and other inorganic materials, using special techniques.

The organic free glass is then ground producing a powder that is divided in two fractions: “Glassy Sand” (0.1– 0.8mm; 70% of the total) that is a new and very interesting raw material for the glass container industry and “Ceramic Sand” (lower than 0.1mm) used by the ceramic industry as a partial substitute for feldspar. The recovered PVB and other post consumer plastics are fed to a reactor under vacuum where, in absence of oxygen, at 500°C, the polymers crack, mainly into hydrocarbons used for electric and heat power generation.

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The Authors

Mr. Piero Ercole SASIL S.p.A. Born in the year 1934, I graduated in industrial chemistry at the Turin (Italy) University. From 1960 to 1970 I worked for an important R & D institute owned by the most important Italian chemical in... Read more