Life cycle assessment of remanufacturing of vehicle components Life cycle assessment, LCA, has been used to compare the environmental impact of new vehicle components with remanufactured vehicle components. The aim was to develop simplified guidelines for decisions when a component, for environmental reasons, should be remanufactured, or scrapped and recycled. The study focuses on a stay, wheel spindle, link arm and electric motor from the rear trailer on a Volvo XC90 Hybrid, a traction battery from the plug-in Volvo V60 and various seats cover constructions. The figure below shows how much climate impact is avoided if a damaged component is replaced with a remanufactured component, instead of a new component.

The reduced climate impact per component or part (blue bars) varies greatly between different parts, while the climate gain per kilogram part (orange bars) is between 2-14 kg CO2 per kg part or component. Also with regard to resource depletion, all examined parts provide resource savings in remanufacturing compared with new production. The results are so unequivocally positive and the components so different that one should be able to assume that, if it is economically advantageous to remanufacture a car component, it is in all probability also environmentally beneficial. The difference between the bar in steel and the aluminium components (link arm, wheel spindle) indicates that one can count on more environmental benefits the more precious metal is used. Both the battery and the electric motor indicate potentially very large environmental benefits from remanufacturing. However, it is important that driveline components do not lose efficiency due to remanufacturing, as the use phase dominates the life cycle environmental impact of driveline components. Seat covers were investigated with an alternative focus. Remanufacturing of seat covers as an isolated component is not practiced and also not foreseen with the current construction, since they are an integrated part of a seat. Investigations therefore focused on proposed design changes and on changes of material choice. For the seat covers as they are currently used, remanufacturing assumes that they remain on the seat and are transferred to another vehicle. This requires removal of the airbag and addition of a new one in all cases. For remanufacturing of seats, economic barriers have been identified due to the relatively high demand for storage space and transport volume of car seats, and the large number of variations in seat design with covers in textile and leather in several colours. Regarding the simplified LCA methodology used in the project, the following can be concluded: • New manufacturing is often complex and thus resource-intensive to model. An alternative is then to instead compare with existing LCA studies on similar components. This strategy was applied, in this study, regarding battery and electric motor. • The seat cover manufacturing is modelled based on existing models for textile processes intended for apparel and fashion evaluation (Mistra future fashion and several studies related to environmental product declarations, EPD). With the perspective of a supplier who explores options in design that reduce the climate impact of a future seat cover, the focus for this case was on the cradle to gate stages of seat cover manufacturing. Remanufacturing of seat covers is not well established and based on assumptions and thus not modelled as completely as the other parts of the life cycle. • The sub-components that are replaced in the remanufacturing need not be included in the remanufacturing model if they are included in the new manufacturing model, since they even out. However, this simplification presupposes a separate, or sufficiently detailed LCA model of the new production, so that replaced sub-components can be removed there. • Large uncertainty about how material recycling gains should be calculated. The rule of crediting with the same material data set used for the new manufacture provides a degree of certainty, but further guidelines would be desirable. Use of cut-off methodology is a possibility.