Aircraft recycling set to become big business

NEW YORK (Scrap Monster): Estimates from the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA) show that in the next 20 years, 12,000 aircrafts will be out of use, ready to recycle, and pressure is growing to reduce significantly the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

In the wake of this dismantling and recycling scrapped airliners is becoming big business. In mid-2010, AFRA, of which Boeing is a member, set an ambitious target for 90% of the materials salvaged from scrapped aircraft to be recycled - preferably into products in the aviation supply chain - by 2016. It also aims to cut the amount of aircraft manufacturing waste destined for landfill by 25% by 2012, flightglobal.com reports.

A large part of the problem is that many aircraft are scrapped in parts of the world where recycling facilities do not exist and shipping is costly. Also, the material used in interiors – glass fibre, for example does not have a high market value when recycled.

Pamela's (Process for Advanced Management of End of Life Aircraft) aim was to demonstrate that, by 2015, 85% of an aircraft's parts could be reused, recovered or recycled in an environmentally friendly way. In February 2006, a year-long operation began to dismantle an Airbus A300 at Tarbes airport in western France and test various processes for recycling its parts. Some 15% of the aircraft's weight ended up in landfill - a vast improvement on the 40-45% that would have been dumped previously. Most of that 15% related to materials found in the cabin.

Airbus predicts that at least 6,500 aircraft in the 100 plus passenger category will reach end of life over the next 20 years, and 1,500 of them will be Airbuses. Tarmac, whose aim is to industrialize the best practices identified by Pamela, will go some way towards dealing with these airliners as they head for the grave.

France is also home to another aircraft dismantling and recycling facility - the Chateauroux Air Centre, a member of AFRA. At Chateauroux, maintenance, repair and overhaul company Europe Aviation and Veolia subsidiary Bartin Aero Recycling take apart 10 to 12 airliners a year, a figure that is set to rise.

In a similar vein, Airbus in 2008 began talks to pull together a network of authorised aircraft recycling centres across the world. Its aim was to develop a global network of end-of-life centres that would dismantle and recycle aircraft in an environmentally responsible way.

Not all companies involved in recycling aircraft parts offer a full dismantling service. For instance, Duisburg, Germany-based ELG Metals, which has more than 40 facilities worldwide, specializes in recycling aircraft engines into new jet engine parts, and is one of only a handful of companies involved in this activity.

AFRA, Fraissignes is working on a global-scale aircraft-recycling project that he hopes will be launched in the next two years, flightglobal.com reports.