EXERGY STRATEGIES FOR THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY: DISMANTLING, DISASSEMBLY, ECO-DESIGN AND RECYCLING IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES

This study focuses on analyzing the recyclability capacity of the Connected Electric Vehicle (CEV) model CUPRA Born concerning different disassembly levels. Its purpose is to promote sustainable practices that efficiently and safely contribute to the supply of critical metals in the CEV's industrial value chain. For this purpose, four fundamental components of the vehicle have been examined: the permanent magnet electric engine, the charge regulator, the inverter, and the converter. Regarding the methodology applied, the starting point of this study is to manually disassemble the most critical parts in terms of mineral capital. For the recyclability analysis, three different scenarios have been considered, evaluating metal recovery in terms of mass and mineral capital. The first scenario entails the shredding of parts alongside the vehicle, exclusively recovering the ferrous fraction through the post-shredding processes applied. The second recycling scenario involves extracting parts from the vehicle and recycling them separately, following a metallurgical process aimed at copper or steel recovery. In the latter case, not only copper is recovered, but also other critical and precious metals such as gold. The final recycling scenario considered includes the disassembly of parts, their categorization into various material types, and the recycling of each subpart through the most appropriate industrial route. The composition results reveal that, overall, the analyzed parts are mainly composed of copper, iron, and aluminum, being the latter the most critical in terms of both mass and mineral capital. Additionally, other elements such as gold, platinum group metals (PGMs), and the rare earth metals have been identified in minor quantities but with a high mineral capital value because of their Thermodynamic Rarity. As an example, the charger is mainly composed in terms of mass by Al (63%), Fe (16%) and Cu (10%). As for the mineral capital, the most critical metals are: Al (77%), Au (8%) and Cu (6%). Based on the recyclability results obtained, it was noted that the disassembly significantly increases the mineral capital recovery for the parts as a whole, from 47 % to 75 %. However, a potential challenge was identified in the significant amount of aluminum present in the parts since it is not possible to efficiently recover this metal with the proposed metallurgical routes