Mitsubishi Monitor 0304 GREEN DIAMONDS


	Mitsubishi Materials recycles shredder residue at its Onahama Smelter in Japan.

Mitsubishi Materials and three other leading producers of nonferrous metals have identified several promising ways to recycle automotive shredder residue. That residue is what remains in shredding machines after recycling companies have recovered everything commercially reusable from vehicle scrap.
   A lot of the shredder residue is nonferrous metals, mainly copper, zinc and lead. Those metals, unlike steel and iron, are nonmagnetic and therefore impossible to extract magnetically. They also are difficult to process into commercially viable purities when they are removed.

Burial alternatives
Burial in landfill sites is traditionally the most common way to dispose of shredder residue. But Japan is running out of places to bury industrial waste, and the Japanese government has adopted legislation that soon will require automakers to recycle shredder residue. European nations also are preparing to adopt tough legislation that will require automakers to recycle more of the material in their vehicles (see article below). So the stakes are high in the competition to develop recycling technologies for shredder residue.
   Mitsubishi Materials, Furukawa, Mitsui Mining and Smelting and Sumitomo Metal Industries began joint research into shredder residue recycling 10 years ago. Also participating in the project were the nonprofit industry organization Center For Eco-Mining and the government-funded New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization.
   The companies recently announced their findings. Their report provided gratifying assurance that industry will be able to recover and use the nonferrous metals in shredder residue.

Toyo Engineering Works is a Mitsubishi company and a leader in industrial refrigeration systems. Recently, it won an order for Japan's first large nonfluorocarbon freezing system.


This freezing system from Toyo Engineering Works is an important advance in environmentally sound food processing.

Manufacturers of air conditioning and refrigeration equipment have are phasing out chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants,which damage the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. But the most common replacements, hydrofluorocarbons, present a different environmental problem. Though ozone-safe, they are, like chlorofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases, which aggravate global warming. The big new freezer from Toyo Engineering Works uses neither chlorofluorocarbons nor hydrofluorocarbons.
Toyo Engineering Works' freezer uses carbon dioxide and ammonia instead of fluorocarbons. A cooling circuit based on ammonia refrigerant liquefies the carbon dioxide.The liquid CO2 serves as the refrigerant in a second cooling circuit for the freezer compartment.
Nestlé Japan Holding Co., Ltd., is the customer for the freezer. The world's largest food processor, Nestlé is switching to refrigeration systems based on natural refrigerants at its operations worldwide. Toyo Engineering Works, meanwhile, will promote its environmentally friendly cooling technology in the chemical industry and other sectors, as well as in the food processing industry.

The people at Mitsubishi Motors and DaimlerChrysler are giving consideration to cooperating in recycling vehicles in Europe. Automakers are racing to cope with increasingly stringent recycling regulations in the European Union (EU). DaimlerChrysler, meanwhile, is Mitsubishi Motors' principal shareholder, with a 34% stake. So the two companies were natural partners for a European recycling program.
   The European Union is urging its member nations to require manufacturers to take responsibility for recycling their products. It is proposing that governments aim for a vehicle recycling rate of 85% by 2006 and 95% by 2015. It is proposing that they require automakers to attain a recylability rate of 95% by 2006 in the materials that they use in their vehicles.
   Mitsubishi Motors and DaimlerChrysler will cooperate in studying the outlook for recycling legislation in each EU nation. They also will work together in evaluating the infrastructure presently available in each nation. to support vehicle recycling.
   Based on their findings, the two automakers will consider ways of building vehicle recycling networks in the EU nations.
   The recycling collaboration under consideration between Mitsubishi Motors and DaimlerChrysler would include studying the potential for cooperating in reselling used vehicles. In addition, the two automakers would compile a database about trends in vehicle scrapping and recycling in the European Union.