The number of vehicles in the roads of the US today is staggering. And year after year, a huge number of these cars will be replaced by their owners. This means that the old vehicles will have to be disposed of.
The common way to dispose of these cars is to shred them to small pieces and dispose them in a landfill. The process involves a hammermill which acts as a giant tree chipper in grinding the vehicles into small pieces. After the hammermill is done with its work, what would have been left of the original vehicle is a collection of fist-sized ferrous and non-ferrous metals as well as shredder waste called automotive shredder residue or ASR.
ASR consists of glass, fiber, rubber, automotive liquids, plastics and dirt - these are then disposed of properly on maintained landfills across the country. One problem involved in the shredding process is that ASR commonly contains dangerous substances like lead, cadmium, and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. In fact, some countries around the world classify ASR as hazardous waste and have enacted laws as to what to do with the residues.
Landfills are the common solution to the problem, but with the advent of technology, there is now a way to put these ASRs to good use.
Recently, the Global Research Corporation announced that they have developed a technology which will allow the extraction of gases and/or diesel fuel, and heating oil from automotive shredder residues. The company stated that their microwave technology can efficiently extract useful substances from the seemingly hazardous and useless automotive refuse.
ASRs equal about ten percent of an entire automobile's weight. In the U.S. and European countries, these refuse of the automotive industry are just buried in landfills. In the U.S. alone, more than 16 million cars are being disposed of each year. These automotive shredder residues cost about between $40 and $60 per ton so that they can be disposed of properly.
The amount of ASRs being buried by the United States means that they are burying millions of barrels of oil per year. With the help of the technology developed by the GBRC, advanced countries can extract reusable products from wastes of the auto industry. This will go a long way in reducing the country's dependency on foreign oil. If the technology is employed by the concerned sector of the country, it surely will be a big help towards the administration's drive for reduced oil dependency.
GBRC announced that with their patent-pending microwave technology, they can convert automotive shredder residues by 43 percent by-weight into gases and/or diesel fuels and heating oil. This will mean that the unusable materials that the governments spend money to dispose of will be a new source of fuel. The technology when applied will make seemingly useless residues from car part components like and other components be used to alleviate the problem encountered in properly disposing of the hazardous materials.
The fact that diesel fuel can be extracted from waste products will only help the promotion of the use of diesel engines on American vehicles.
"We are really excited that our technology works to recycle automobiles", GBRC Chief Executive Officer Frank Pringle said. "Our technology can really cut down on the waste that disposing of cars currently requires. GBRC endeavors to clean the environment and this will be a huge step to attain that end," Pringle added.
As the awareness to protect the environment increases everyday, developments such as the microwave technology that GBRC developed will be very welcomed indeed. More and more developments such as this are needed to properly combat the negative effects that the human populace has inflicted on the planet for so many decades.
