Recyclability evaluation method considering material combination and degradation

Abstract

A new method of recyclability evaluation is proposed. The recyclability of a product is given by summing up recyclability of all units to which the product is manually disassembled. The recyclability of a unit is calculated if all names and amounts of materials of which the unit is composed are known. The recyclability of a disassembled unit consisting of multiple materials is judged on the grounds of removability of impurities, miscibility and marketability of polymer blends. Recyclability of a long-lifetime product can be estimated from recyclability of units, which are modeled as probabilistically distributed degradation of materials. The proposed method is applied to recyclability evaluation for a refrigerator with several scenarios of disassembly levels. The practical disassembly scenarios limit the maximum recyclability rate of the product. Therefore, recyclability rates calculated based on the proposed method are considerably lower than those of the recyclable materials of which the product consisted.