Faulty car windows often go in the recycling bin when the cracked part cannot be fixed. A closed material circuit does not yet exist for damaged car glass. This is where Audi and its partner companies Reiling Glas Recycling, Saint-Gobain Glass, and Saint-Gobain Sekurit are now doing pioneering work as part of a joint pilot project.
The glass recycling pilot project starts with selected dealerships in the Volkswagen Group’s retail network. Customers whose cars have a damaged window set up appointments there. If the window can be repaired, it is replaced and the broken pane is delivered to Volkswagen’s Original Teile Logistik GmbH & Co. KG. This VW subsidiary organizes the disposal of parts that are no longer needed from VW workshops. Car windowpanes are removed from that process for recycling.
Damaged windowpanes are delivered to Reiling Glas Recycling. There, they are first broken up into small pieces and processed. In the process, Reiling puts the old car glazing back into plate glass production for the first time. “Until now, the recycled material has mostly been turned into beverage bottles,” explains Daniel Rottwinkel, Plant Manager at Reiling Glas Recycling. “Car glass has to meet the most stringent requirements, for example with respect to crash safety. Those demands don’t apply to bottles.” In the past, post-consumer glass from cars has not been used in plate glass production, but rather for different purposes with less rigorous requirements. That is where the joint project begins.
In order to be able to produce high-quality recyclable material from this used laminated glass, Reiling Glas Recycling uses modern, powerful equipment. The company sorts out non-glass materials like PVB (polyvinyl butyral) plastic layers in the glass, window edgings, metals, and wires, such as heating filament and antenna cables. The elimination process is carried out using magnets, non-ferrous metal separators, extraction units, and electro-optical sorting units. In the future, such PVB layers are also meant to be introduced into a vehicle circuit.
Second step
In the next recycling step after the glass recyclate has been processed and all possible waste materials have been removed, Saint-Gobain Glass turns it into plate glass in Herzogenrath, Germany. The glass granulate is initially segregated by type for clear verification of source and color and then stored in bins. Producing new base glass requires the purest, most homogeneous glass recyclate possible.
Saint-Gobain Glass then mixes the recyclate with, among other things, quartz sand, sodium carbonate, and chalk (basic components of glass). At the moment, the proportion of recylate to other materials varies from 30 to 50 percent.
The target for the pilot project with Audi is about 40 tons of recycled car glass. “For us, this cycle of making new car windows out of old ones is an important step toward producing automotive glass in a way that conserves resources and energy,” says Dr. Markus Obdenbusch, production manager in charge of the Saint-Gobain float at the Herzogenrath site. “We’re just starting to look at glass as a recyclate, so we anticipate that there will be more potential for improvement.”
The plate glass is first processed into rectangles of about 3 x 6 meters (10 x 20 feet) each. After that, the affiliated company Saint-Gobain Sekurit produces automotive glass through an additional process.
Third step
The three partner companies have decided to put the process to an initial one-year test so that they can learn about material quality, stability, and costs. If glass can be recycled in an economical and an ecologically meaningful way, car windows made from secondary materials will be used in the Audi Q4 e-tron series.
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Video Timeline
0:00 - Removal of Defective Windshield
(Ausbau Defekte Windschutzscheibe)
0:48 - Glass Recycling at Reiling
(Glas Recycling bei Reiling)
2:12 - Float Glass Production at Saint Gobain
(Floatglasproduktion bei Saint Gobain)
3:38 - Car Window Manufacturing at Saint-Gobain Sekurit
(Autoscheibenherstellung bei Saint-Gobain Sekurit)
4:18 - Window Assembly at Plant Zwickau Volkswagen Sachsen, Audi Q4 e-tron
(Scheibenmontage im Farzeugwerk Zwickau der Volkswagen Sachsen)
4:58 - Interview, Philipp Eder, Projektleiter Glasrecycling, Audi
(Philipp Eder, Project Manager Glass Recycling, Audi)
6:07 - Interview, Daniel Rottwinkel, Betriebsleiter, Reiling Glass Recycling
(Plant Manager, Reiling Glass Recycling)
7:00 - Interview, Dr. Markus Obdenbusch, Manager Float Linie, Saint-Gobain Glass
(Manager Float Line, Saint-Gobain Glass)
7:49 - Interview, Laura Diesel, Marketing Manager, Saint-Gobain Sekurit
8:20 - Interview, Christoph Schiffers, Prozessmanager, Saint-Gobain Sekurit
(Process Manager, Saint-Gobain Sekurit)
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