DYLARK and Recycling in the Automotive Industry

A primary automotive industry objective is to increase the recycling content of molded automotive parts. In recent years, there has been an increase of plastic resins recovered from manufacturing operations and post-consumer use.

Manufacturing Reclaimed DYLARK Resin

Reclaimed DYLARK resins from rejected in-plant manufacturing instrument panels (IP’s) and trim offal have been in operation for more than 10 years. High-quality reclaimed resin is blended with virgin glass-reinforced resin to mold IP substrates and comply with OEM material specifications. To date, the process has reclaimed more than 10 million pounds of DYLARK resin, directly reducing environmental impact, exceeding landfill requirements, and lowering manufacturing and waste management costs.

Property Comparison DYLARK 480P16 and reclaim

*Reclaim has trace amount of contaminants (i.e. < 0.02% PVC skin and < 0.02 %PUR Foam)

Physical properties of the 100 % reclaimed DYLARK resins compare favorably with both shipment certification and specification. Generally, impact properties of glass-reinforced resins will decrease upon processing through the injection-molding machine due to glass fiber attrition. Reclaim resins blended at an 80/20 ratio meets or exceeds specifications.

Society of Automotive Engineers technical reports and presentations on recovering DYLARK resin from manufacturing operations are available upon request. Commercial installation facilities for DYLARK resin recovery are located at ACI Plastics in Flint, Michigan, and at Wipag-ACI in the United Kingdom and Germany.

Post-Consumer Instrument Panel Recycling

Post-consumer IP recycling programs are not commercially available for IP removal, component disassembly and separation and recovery of re-useable resins. Although salvage yards dismantle vehicles and recover approximately 75–80% of the metal and workable parts, a process for the economical recovery of IP resins is not yet available. The average IP contains several types of resin in lesser amounts than the primary IP resin and presents greater difficulties in recovery. The U.S. government is considering a study on the feasibility of post-consumer economics of IP recycling.

DYLARK Product Technology conducted a post-consumer recycling study with IP’s recovered from an Arizona salvage facility. Several Ford Tempo IP’s with 4-10 years of vehicle service were recovered. The urethane foam and PVC skin laminate was removed, the IP’s were ground to a uniform particle size and the DYLARK resin was recovered via an air separation process. The reclaimed DYLARK resin was molded into test bars and compared to original physical properties on record at the time of the IP manufacture.

Results of the post-consumer study after four- and 10-year vehicle life cycles:

• Reclaimed DYLARK resin retained 85-99% of original mechanical properties.
• DYLARK virgin resins were blended (80/20 ratio) with reclaim resin to meet existing specifications.
• Quality and physical properties of DYLARK reclaim resin was equivalent to molding quality regrind.
• DYLARK resins recovered from post-consumer automobiles exhibited excellent mechanical property retention.
• Contaminant effects were identified and controlled.