Treball desenvolupat dins el marc del programa 'European Project Semester' i l'"International Design Semester".

The following project took place in the European project semester in spring 2016 and was settled at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Vilanova I la Geltrù. This project was initiated by PICVISA, a sub company of the Calaf Group. For example, they are offering some material treatments like sorting of recycling materials. This recycling is for today’s society getting a very important topic because of the environmental pollution and the limited natural resources. But for some specific materials a way to recycle is still missing. The goals of this project were to describe the end of life vehicle recycling and finally solve a specific sorting problem of the company. Therefore, a thoroughly research of the actual literature was done to describe the used dismantling techniques, the materials of a car and reuse possibilities. Also there is an overview of all the different actual sorting techniques which are existing in the market. All these research topics lead to some materials which cannot be sorted at the moment. One of these materials are plastics when they are black coloured. This is also the specific problem of PICVISA. In order to estimate the market for this type of materials, there is a market analysis of the end of life vehicle treatment done. This carried out, that there is a quite huge market for this specific type of materials (50-100 M € in whole Europe). That’s why it seems to be a good idea continue working in this business field. So the next step is a brainstorming which collects several different thoughts to solve the issue and also the criteria to assess them. Then, these criteria are ranked regarding to their importance with an analytical hierarchy process. With this it is possible to evaluate each idea in a decision matrix. This leads to the most proper solution according to the given criteria. In this case the choice was an electrostatic sorting method. In this method, the plastic particles are charged electrostatically, in this use, because of the friction between the single particles (tribo-charging). Because of the electrostatic effects and unequal dielectric constants of the plastics, these materials are charged differently. So it is possible to separate them in a high voltage field. In order to separate several types of plastic, only more of those machines are needed in a row, because there is a tribo-electric charging row among all the plastics.