Recycling of worn out brake pads ‒ impact on tribology and environment

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 8369
• Main Authors: Lyu, Yezhe, Ma, Jijie, Åström, Anna Hedlund, Wahlström, Jens, Olofsson, Ulf
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 20.05.2020; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/166/988; 639/301/1023/1025; 704/172/4081; 704/844/685; Braking systems; Carbon dioxide; Carbon footprint; Energy consumption; Engineering and Technology; Environmental impact; Humanities and Social Sciences; Landfills; Life cycle analysis; Life cycles; Maskinteknik; Mechanical Engineering; multidisciplinary; Recycling; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Teknik; Tribologi (ytteknik omfattande friktion, nötning och smörjning); Tribology; Waste disposal sites
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-65265-w

Disc brake systems are widely used on commercial vehicles for braking. The brake pads are usually replaced by new ones before being totally worn out. Current methods to deal with the replaced brake pads include landfill and combustion, resulting in a huge waste of resources and increase of CO 2 footprint. From a sustainable point of view, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility of recycling replaced brake pads by addressing a protocol recycling procedure. The results show that the recycled brake pads yield similar friction, wear and airborne particle emission to virgin brake pads. A streamlined life cycle assessment is conducted to compare the environmental impacts between producing virgin brake pads and recycling replaced brake pads. Energy consumption and CO 2 footprint of the recycled brake pads are 36% and 34% less than virgin brake pads, indicating that recycling could be a promising method of handling replaced brake pads.