C1-03 Quality evaluation and development of automotive parts for the application of recycled materials to automotive interior and exterior parts
Principal Investigator
UCHIDA Hitoshi (Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd.)
Research and Development Overview
In Europe, mechanisms supporting the circular economy, including ELV regulations*1, and technologies for recycling plastic materials have been put into practical use. This R&D project focuses on PP materials, which account for approximately 60% of plastic materials used in automobiles, and aims to develop materials with increased recycled content by evaluating material properties, processing characteristics, and reliability of automotive interior and exterior components using recycled materials, including those recovered from non-automotive post-consumer plastics.
The evaluation results for automotive parts application, including product performance assessment, will be fed back to material manufacturers, ultimately leading to automotive parts development. Through this initiative, we will contribute to the development of Minimum Viable Products (MVP) of high-quality recycled materials that comply with ELV regulation proposals.
*1 End-of-life vehicles regulation: New rules for the design and end-of-life management of vehicles aim to protect the environment, decarbonize production and reduce raw material dependencies, benefiting EU industries.
Progress and Achievements
Through separate discussions with automobile manufacturers (OEMs), we established target values equivalent to those set by automotive industry associations for basic physical properties and mechanical characteristics of recycled materials. Toward these targets, material manufacturers produced recycled materials containing recycled content (from non-automotive sources), and we completed a full cycle from parts prototyping to product evaluation using these recycled materials, identifying challenges for social implementation.
The evaluation results showed that with recycled content of 25-30%, depending on the performance of the virgin materials used in the blend, we could obtain recycled materials that largely met the physical property targets.
In the product molding process evaluation, there was no severe odor during molding, and product molding could be performed without significant changes to molding conditions. However, with 100% recycled material, the flowability was inferior, and due to low filler content causing molding shrinkage, the resulting molded products were small.
In product performance evaluation, with recycled content of 25-30%, the impact resistance of the products met the required performance. Additionally, regarding product odor, there was no unpleasant smell, resulting in satisfactory products.
The FY2024 results indicated that with recycled content at the 30% level, there is potential to meet initial performance requirements for interior components. Future work will focus on confirming the impact of recycled material performance variations on product performance and verification testing for automotive exterior components.