Ford recycles about 20 million pounds of military-grade aluminium scrap every month

<p>Chip Conrad, a&nbsp; stamping engineer in Ford, North America led the designing of a closed-loop&nbsp;recycling system that recycles 5 million pounds of high-strength military-grade aluminium scrap every week.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="vertical-align: middle;" src="http://www.alcircle.com/uploads/images/ford-f-150.jpg" alt="News" width="517" height="226" /></p> <p>Now in operation at three Ford factories, two of which build F-150, the bestselling pickup trucks in America, the system is saving monumental energy and material. According to the company website, the amount of recycled high-strength military-grade aluminium alloy, saved by Ford through closed-loop recycling is good enough to build either 51 commercial jetliners or more than 37,000 F-150 truck bodies a month.</p> <p>According to Conrad using high-strength military-grade aluminium-alloy bodies for F-150 helps their customers with sustainability. This according to him makes sound business sense and helps Ford reduce its environmental impact.&rdquo;</p> <p>The closed-loop recycling system was started at Dearborn&nbsp;Stamping Plant to recover high-strength military-grade aluminum-alloy. The system is now in use at Kentucky Truck, home to Super Duty, and Buffalo Stamping, which manufactures alloy panels for commercial F-Series trucks.<br /> <br /> Scrap aluminium material is shredded into chips, roughly the size of a dollar bill, which are then turned into new metal.</p> <p>&ldquo;The system automatically knows which of the four different grades of alloy is being stamped at a given time, then it routes the material into one of four trucks standing by to send it back for reprocessing,&rdquo; says Conrad.</p> <p>{googleAdsense}</p> <p>As Ford boosts the use of aluminium in its product lineup, closed loop recycling systems will play a very important part to justify viability of lightweight materials and to meet overall sustainability targets.</p> <p>&ldquo;Our ability to recycle leads to improved fuel economy and capability for our truck customers,&rdquo; says Conrad. &ldquo;And it helps us build more affordable, high-performing, efficient trucks,&rdquo; he concluded.</p>