Assessing the economics of processing end-of-life vehicles through manual dismantling

• An economic model for ELVs based on manual dismantling was constructed.
• Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process was applied in the economic system.
• The experimental results proved the economic feasibility of manual dismantling.
• An optimal dismantling scenario for dismantling enterprises was proposed.

Most dismantling enterprises in a number of developing countries, such as China, usually adopt the “manual + mechanical” dismantling approach to process end-of-life vehicles. However, the automobile industry does not have a clear indicator to reasonably and effectively determine the manual dismantling degree for end-of-life vehicles. In this study, five different dismantling scenarios and an economic system for end-of-life vehicles were developed based on the actual situation of end-of-life vehicles. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process was applied to set the weights of direct costs, indirect costs, and sales and to obtain an optimal manual dismantling scenario. Results showed that although the traditional method of “dismantling to the end” can guarantee the highest recycling rate, this method is not the best among all the scenarios. The profit gained in the optimal scenario is 100.6% higher than that in the traditional scenario. The optimal manual dismantling scenario showed that enterprises are required to select suitable parts to process through manual dismantling. Selecting suitable parts maximizes economic profit and improves dismantling speed.