Cost-oriented Approach to Recovery of Vehicles to meet the the ELV Directive

Start - Finish:

2004-2006

Research Conducted by:

G. Coates

Keywords:

Value recovery, ELV, dismanlting economics, shredder economics

Industrial collaborators:

Jaguar Cars Ltd.
Galorath Affliates Ltd
Strategic Environmental Management Limited
Rozone Ltd.
Knibb Gormezano & Partners (KGP)
 

Aims & Objectives:

To create a cost oriented decision support for the recovery of the most amount of end-of-life value while at the same time meeting the legislative requirements.

Brief Description

Value realisation is obviously dependent on being able to gain an understanding of a salvage facility's ability to understand the economics of its own operation. Recommending additional end-of-life processing activities must also be measured against the costs and revenues of existing processing routes. Only then can an informed judgement be made, supported with an analysis as to its financial viability. Given the relatively recent introduction of approved vehicle treatment facilities within the UK , many operators have little or no detailed understanding of the economic drivers that underpin their industry. Hence, the starting point for the research was to gain an understanding as to how these recovery facilities ran and operated in light of the requirements laid down by the new ELV Directive.

This modelling provided a process map of the dissemination of the vehicle waste as it passes between various recovery agents, and enables the various direct and indirect costing elements of vehicle reclamation to be highlighted. These costing elements were then used to apply the most appropriate costing techniques (parametrics, analogues, detailed, active based costing, etc.) to the information available and the level of detail required. This cost modelling then made it apparent as to where additional data collection efforts needed to be focused (i.e. vehicle dismantling study, parts resale survey data), or in some instances where radically new costing approaches had to be developed from scratch (i.e. post-fragmentation costing).

As a result of a prolong period of model development a VB.Net application was created that integrated all the various costing approaches into one model, the architecture of which is depicted within figure 1.
 

This software model is designed to allow a vehicle salvage operator the ability to model the value-added processing that their specific facility provides, and to support a number of micro and macro level decisions. At the highest level it can provide insight into that facilities current recycling and recovery levels, and provide a detailed understanding as to a facility's operating costs. This modelling can then be used to provide a break-even analysis for a specific EOL operator based on current material market prices. At the lowest levels it attempts to support decisions such as optimal plastics disassembly (based on mass or value) to facilitate either, pre-fragmentation achievement of the 2015 recycling and reuse target, or identification of profitable plastics assemblies capable of offsetting any direct labour costs incurred. Figure 2 provides a screen-shot from this pre-fragmentation module. Additional micro level support has also considered the cost modelling of post-fragmentation material recovery and developed a separation model to predict the routing of typical material waste streams through a shredding facility (see figure 3 and excel download).
 

Spin off Work:

- A subsequent Research Industrial Secondment Scheme looking at the exploition of the research developed within this project, resulted in the development on an touch screen decision support tool. This is capable of selecting material to be removed from an ELV based on a value vs effort assessment. Online web access for site visitors is intended to be implemented in the coming months.

For More information please contact Prof. S. Rahimifard:

S.Rahimifard@lboro.ac.uk