Jaguar Land Rover is trialling a new process that will give aluminium used in our cars a second life in the future.
Project REALITY is the next step in the company’s aluminium
closed loop strategy, which will see material recovered from existing Jaguar
and Land Rover vehicles reformed into new-high grade aluminium to be used in
the construction of next generation vehicles.
Initially being trialled on pre-production I-PACE
prototypes, the programme part-funded by Innovate UK, will see those cars
broken down and the various materials sorted by Axion high-tech sensors.
The scrap aluminium will then be melted down and reformed,
ready for its next use. The I-PACE’s battery packs will enter their own
second-life process, with energy storage trials being planned in the future.
Gaëlle Guillaume, Lead Project Manager of REALITY, said:
“More than a million cars are crushed every year in the UK and this pioneering
project affords us a real opportunity to give some of them a second life.
“Aluminium is a valuable material and a key component in our
manufacturing process and as such we’re committed to ensuring our use of it is
as responsible as possible.”
Currently the second-life aluminium is undergoing tests at
Brunel University, where the materials strength and purity are being tested to
see if it adheres to the required mechanical standards.
Part of the plan is to engineer a closed loop recycling
process into tight production schedules by using decommissioned large shared
fleets. Those vehicles can be recovered, de-polluted and shredded en masse –
making a viable case for using our own recycled materials within our
manufacturing plants.
In the future, the ambition is that when REALITY is
operating at full capacity, it will help reduce the amount of virgin aluminium
the business uses and the CO2 impact of production, as Jaguar Land
Rover aims to improve on its 46 percent CO2 reduction made per
vehicle across its global vehicle manufacturing operations.
Jaguar Land Rover already has an aluminium closed loop
circle economy. Since September 2013, more than 300,000 tonnes of scrap
material has been used in our lightweight aluminium intensive architecture. One
vehicle to benefit from this process was the Jaguar XE, which became the first
vehicle to use 75 percent of recycled aluminium in its body panels.
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