WPI Center looks to recycled metals to Boost Manufacturing

Industrial Symbiosis and Eco-industrial Development

 

Contributed by Peter Lowitt, based on an article from telegram.com, June 2017

An interesting article on aluminum recycling:

"Sean Kelly visited a car dismantler in Worcester, a metal shredder in Everett and a university in Norway all for the same purpose: understanding what happens to an automobile at the end of its life. For Mr. Kelly, 24, a research assistant in the Metal Processing Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the goal is to understand how aluminum is recycled from vehicles so he can help the U.S. car manufacturing industry use recycled aluminum in efficient and environmentally sustainable ways.

“I drive a car every day, and before this project, I didn’t even think about what happened at end of life,” said Mr. Kelly, a doctoral candidate in material science engineering. “Everywhere you look there’s opportunity for material recovery and recycling.”

Mr. Kelly’s research is one of about two dozen projects underway at the Metal Processing Institute, a research facility founded at WPI in 1996 and focused on using materials science to improve business and manufacturing. Four research centers within the institute support alliances between industry and universities: the Center for Resource Recovery and Recycling, the Advanced Casting Research Center, the Center for Heat Treating Excellence and the Center for Materials Processing Data.

About 70 industry and academic organizations are involved in the institute. Members propose projects and select a university to perform research. A focus group provides support and industry perspective for each project. The institute receives about $2.5 million annually in research funding and grants. Forty percent comes from federal grants.“The primary purpose of MPI is to solve industry problems, to develop new methods or materials for the industry, or even to share fundamental results that companies are seeking,” Brajendra Mishra, director of MPI, said in a recent news release.

Read the article here.