Dynamic material flow analysis of aluminum from automobiles in China during 2000–2050 for standardized recycling management

Abstract

Aluminum has been playing a significant role in the development of global vehicles light-weighting for mass reduction and energy conservation. Owing to the limited lifespan of automobiles, the huge wave of obsolete automotive aluminum (OAA) has come. China, the country with the largest vehicles ownership in the world, will be facing with the OAA boom as well inevitably. However, the typical statistics of China’ automotive aluminum are absent and the waste management of OAA is disorganized which might result in resource inefficiency. Herein, we build a model based on dynamic material analysis to figure out the historical data of China's OAA and forecast the future trend from life cycle perspective (mining, production, usage, waste, recycle), followed by proposing a standard system to promote the OAA standardized recycling management. We found that: During 2000 to 2050, 1) around 75% of China's OAA were not recycled annually, or even being recycled, most of which were downgraded into less valuable products; 2) China's annual OAA would peak around 2035 while the accumulated amount of recycled OAA in China would reach 14–130 million tons in different scenarios. If all recycled, approximately 44–406 million tons of bauxite could be saved and 600–5500 million CO2 -eq emission could be avoided; 3) the recycled OAA in some regions are in conflict with local affiliated constructions. These vital findings could provide scientific data for formulating targeted policies on effectively reusing automotive aluminum for resource conservation, regional circularity and carbon reduction.