The Dismantling Glass on ELV Needs Low Cost Technologies

Giovanni Manfrè, De-Bonding Ltd

The dismounting glass on ELV needs a low cost technology: Debonding. The directory decision European, Japanese and even the North America is giving, by 2005 – 2006, the legal normative to achieve the recyclability of the End Life Vehicles (ELV) at least of the 85% for materials, including the about 4% relative of whole weight of glass of any vehicles. The dismount of the glazing seems to cost quite high, due to the time consuming of the present cutting and hammering glass technology, which, only in some car ELV, slows down only real 0.12 the glass recycling, from about the glass 0.4 the total weight of a car. Now new possibility even with a suitable selection of the cullets has recently been developed mainly by Asahi, who has rationalized the steps of separating the collected glasses before the shredding process able to automatically classify the cullets, for laminated and tempered glass, for their recycling use in the glass production.

The time for dismounting the whole glazing is now at least 20 minutes and its cost seems at least more than 10 ÷ 15 US per car. The Debonding technology for ELV and even for replacing the glass (between 6 ÷ 8% in the aftermarket), is now starting to be industrially developed in Europe as it has been accepted, since 2004, to be part of European projects (ILIPT and ECODISM) where car and glass and adhesive manufacturers are active working coordinated by St. Gobain. De-Bonding actively participates even with his three patents, as two based on the easy dismount due to thermal expanding microspheres = TEM and the third on tacky tape. The TEM are mixed in the cleaner - primer interface layers of the direct adhesive bonding system in automotive but, also in building, for glasses but also for other plastic – glass, plastic – plastic, plastic – metals adhesive systems.

Some experimental data will be shown in details and any questions, already answered to glass and car markers, can now be considered overcome to start approaching industrial level [7] at least for the TEM glass – frame technology.

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