Industrial aluminium recycling cycle becomes key to the aircraft end-of-life management challenge

Citation

(2009), "Industrial aluminium recycling cycle becomes key to the aircraft end-of-life management challenge", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 81 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2009.12781baf.003

Industrial aluminium recycling cycle becomes key to the aircraft end-of-life management challenge

Article Type: Features From: Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology: An International Journal, Volume 81, Issue 2

Over 6,000 aircraft will reach their end-of-life in the next 25 years, at a rate of around 300 aircraft per year. The recycling challenge is critical for many industry players, including aircraft manufacturers and material suppliers like Alcan Global Aerospace, Transportation and Industry (ATI).

Alcan Global ATI, part of Alcan Engineered Products – a business unit of Rio Tinto Alcan – is demonstrating the recycling capabilities of its plant in Issoire, France, which provides the aerospace industry with a comprehensive, effective and industrialised solution to manage its growing end-of-life aircraft challenge.

“Aluminium is infinitely recyclable and the recycling process requires only 5 per cent of the energy needed to produce primary metal. These distinctive properties place aluminium alloys ahead of any other materials used in manufacturing an aircraft, and provide aerospace manufacturers with strong competitive advantages when negotiating with customers”, said Christophe Villemin, President of Alcan Global ATI. “Alcan Global ATI’s holistic, closed-loop aluminium recycling reinforces aluminium’s position as the material of choice for aerospace applications.”

Alcan Global ATI is a major company serving key aerospace customers, such as Airbus and Boeing, with advanced aluminium solutions for aircraft and other value-added market applications. Global ATI has manufacturing plants in Europe and America as well as unique R&D and innovation capabilities. It employs 4,200 people.

Alcan Global ATI has developed its expertise of industrial aluminium recycling for Aerospace industry through sustained experience and R&D.

Since 2001, it has been providing the aerospace industry with innovative recycling solutions. “On a one-ton aluminium sheet, less than 100 kg will actually end up flying, the rest being large and small scraps”, explains Pierre-Michel Destret, Alcan Issoire Plant Operations Manager. “Europe’s aerospace industry today generates 90,000 tons of such scraps. Alcan Global ATI recycles 10,000 tons a year at Issoire. Increasing their recycling potential is essential to increasing their value, and ultimately the value of aluminium to the industry”.

Alcan is also developing new technologies and processes to maintain all of the aluminium alloys properties through recycling, allowing an even higher re-use rate in the aerospace industry. Through its R&D investments, Alcan is now able to recycle the most advanced aluminium-lithium alloys, key to tomorrow’s aircraft.

Partnership with Airbus on the PAMELA Life European Project

Since 2007, Alcan Global ATI and Airbus have been partners in the Process for Advanced Management of End of Life of Aircraft – PAMELA Life Project, aimed at developing sustainable dismantling and recycling techniques that comply with environmental, health and safety requirements.

For this project, Alcan Global ATI has conducted a series of remelting tests in its Issoire plant for A300 and A380 airframe aluminium scraps. The success of these two series of tests, yielding a very high-metal recovery rate of approximately 90 per cent, demonstrates how aluminium contributes to sustainable aircraft production.

The aluminium recycling life cycle

This cycle begins during manufacturing, from scrap generated directly inside the plant as well as at the customers’ sites, and completes through remelting aluminium scrap from end-of-life aircraft. Recycling scrap for direct use in an identical aircraft production chain preserves the quality of the metal and thus leverages the full recycling value of advanced aerospace aluminium alloys.