With a heavy heart, you have finally decided to bid farewell to your trusty old vehicle. As you hand over the keys to the scrap metal merchant, pause and ask yourself – ‘Is this really the end for my car?’ And if you are overheard by the spokesperson of a reputable company that processes scrap metal in Chichester, you will be in for a treat. The experts will take you through the lifecycle of recycled vehicles.
What does the lifecycle of a recycled vehicle look like?
Once an authorised merchant dealing in scrap metal in Chichester issues a certificate of destruction for your car, the following steps ensue.
Hazard Neutralisation
Before crushing a single body panel of an end-of-life vehicle, it must be made safe for the environment. The process consists of extracting all hazardous fluids from the scrapped vehicle, including brake fluid, transmission oil, engine oil, leftover fuel, and coolant.
Removing these liquids from a scrapped vehicle prevents environmental pollution. Additional steps are also taken to remove the explosive pyrotechnics from unused airbags from the vehicle.
Component Harvesting For The Secondary Markets
Vehicles are expensive to run and own. Not everyone has the means to buy brand-new replacement parts for their cars. When it’s time to replace a part, vehicle owners on a tight budget turn to the secondary market. Here, OEM vehicle parts are available for one and all. But who or what keeps the secondary vehicle parts market stocked? The answer is – all the scrap metal merchants.
You see, before an end-of-life vehicle is sent to the furnace for processing, on-site experts harvest all the perfectly functional and expensive components. For example, even after millions of miles, a vehicle’s starter motors, alternators, infotainment screens, axles, etc., can be in their prime condition. If harvested, these expensive OEM parts can be refurbished and sold in the secondary market for vehicle parts.
In this way, selective harvesting of vehicle parts lets even an end-of-life vehicle continue serving the global automotive community.
Separation Of Ferrous From Non-Ferrous Materials
After stripping an end-of-life vehicle of its valuable parts, the skeletal remains are fed into an industrial shredder. In mere minutes, what used to be someone’s prized possession on wheels is turned into a heap of fist-sized metal, glass, and plastic fragments.
The next step in the process is to separate ferrous metals from non-ferrous metals using magnetic separators and eddy-current sorters. After that, the high-purity metal is then sent to smelters, where it is melted and reused to make new car parts.
Shredder Residue Management – The Final Phase
The final step of the process involves managing the non-metallic leftovers from a scrapped vehicle. The leftovers consist of plastic trims, rubber, glass and foam weather seals. Instead of being discarded, these leftovers are processed into Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). RDF is then used as fuel for industrial kilns.
Nothing from an end-of-life vehicle is wasted. You see, even the glass from an old car is crushed into cullets, which are then used as road aggregate or to make new glass items.
Help Turn Rusty Chassis Into Raw Resource
When you sell your scrapped vehicle to a scrap metal merchant, you are contributing to a resource-efficient economy. By scrapping your car, you are ensuring the next generation of vehicles yet to be manufactured will have enough raw materials.
Additionally, selling your scrapped vehicle only to a licenced Authorised Treatment Facility (ATF) ensures the end-of-life vehicle is handled with legal transparency and technical integrity. An ATF like HD White Ltd. understands the value of a scrapped vehicle’s raw materials. This is why, by selling your scrapped car to one, you are ensuring the vehicle’s final journey is purposeful.
To learn more about a scrap vehicle’s final journey, connect with a revered ATF near you today.