Recycled Copper Can Help OEMs Achieve Sustainable Development Goals

Copper has long been an important material for automobile electrical architecture. With the development of the industry to all-electric vehicles, copper will become very important. However, as automobile companies strive to reduce their impact on the environment, many companies are seeking to transition to more sustainable solutions. Recycling copper is a promising way to help these efforts.

Copper is highly conductive, extremely flexible, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant, all of which make it an ideal choice for transmitting power and signals in vehicles. The Copper Development Association reports that traditional cars contain 8 to 22 kilograms of copper, but battery electric cars may contain as much as 83 kilograms of copper. The main reason driving this growth is the demand for high-voltage cables and buses, which usually have to be much thicker than low-voltage wiring.

As automakers strive to cope with this growth, they also plan to achieve short-term sustainable development goals, while striving to achieve long-term goals, usually including carbon neutrality in the next few decades.

The process of recovering copper emits less carbon than the process of mining and refining copper. Obviously, with the increase of conductor thickness, the revenue increases significantly. For example, producing one kilometer of 6mm² cable with recycled copper instead of mined copper can save 162 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, while producing one kilometer of 70mm² cable can save 2022 kg of emissions–which is equivalent to the carbon emitted by driving a typical internal combustion engine powered car for nearly 5,000 miles.

When recycled copper is used in typical high-voltage wiring harnesses, including 6mm², 8mm², 50mm² and 70mm², each wiring harness saves 72% of carbon dioxide emissions, that is, 17 kg. For projects that include 119,000 wiring harnesses per year, OEM can reduce carbon emissions by 2,000 metric tons per year by switching to recycled copper. To illustrate this point, a tree will absorb an average of one ton of carbon dioxide in its lifetime. Therefore, a company must plant 2,000 trees every year to achieve the same results without using recycled materials.

Of course, OEM will want to know how the performance of recycled copper is compared with that of mined copper.

To answer this question, we placed a 6mm² high-voltage cable made of recycled copper, and passed the same cable verification test that we run for all cables. We conducted electrical tests, such as evaluating whether it can withstand certain voltages. We conducted mechanical tests, including peeling, abrasion, bending and bending. We conducted a series of environmental tests to measure the effects of hot, cold and circulating temperature and humidity. The recovered copper passed all these tests.

For common applications, copper is regarded as infinitely recyclable without losing its characteristics, making it a key element of decarbonization and circular economy.