Car Recycling

the County of San Bernardino California is proud to support this program and encourages everyone to recycle reduce and reuse everyday can you guess what this is any guesses I'll give you a hint you ride on four of these when you're in a car that's right this is the steel built inside the tire the thing that binds and holds the tire together and it is recycled you want to know what all this is well I'll give you a hint people ride in these every day I'm Joel Green and welcome to curiosity quest goes green the show that explores your curiosities well today we got a quests letter from Cheyenne in San Jose and she wrote dear Joel I have always wondered what happens to cars when they don't work anymore and you can't fix them well Cheyenne because of you we are going to find out how cars are recycled on today's curiosity quest goes green what happens to a car when you are done with it um well I you know it doesn't work you send it to the junket I guess they recycle and make new parts okay I don't know are you sure haha it should go to a junkyard so I can be safe for other people to use like maybe in a used car um it gets recycles and and once your cycle becomes it becomes in the car alright so we're out here at Pacific Coast recycling with bryan up ryan you're going to teach us how to recycle the car right absolutely how does it all start well it all starts when somebody's tired of their car they trade it in it's no longer something that they want to drive around it goes to an auction process and eventually it winds up at an auto recycler they'll take the car in bring all the fluids out of the car take any hazardous material out of the car then they'll use it for parts so they'll take what usable parts are off of it's refurbished those sell those back to the public as a cheaper alternative to somebody going out and buying something new when all the parts have been picked off the car it's no longer usable they'll flatten the car they'll bring it over to us and that's what we take care of the shutting process so the first part of recycling a car is actually reusing sure everything that can be reused on the car absolutely there's a lot of good components on a car that can still be used even after its end of its useful life as a complete car there's a lot of parts that can pull off and recycle themselves okay all right so after the car is flattened then it comes to you then it comes to us they're flattened they come in on the truck we unload them then they go into our shredding machine and we use a mix of flattened car bodies appliances and sheet metal they go into a machine that basically grinds it all up and then separates out the metal from the nonmetal so wait a minute you're going to take these cars and you're going to shred them like sticking metal blender exactly they're going to come out about the size of your hand fun facts fun facts fun facts here's your bus back auto recycling reduces air pollution by 86% this yellow or this orange cover mesh what is that for right that's actually just to protect the other people in the highway these cars are smashed so a lot of things get cracked and broken during the process of flattening them so they wrap this material around there just so the parts don't fall off while they're taking it down the road all right and you don't need to take that off before you remove them no that'll get ground up in our process and you won't ever see it again I won't ever see it again all right now he basically is taking these cars right to the front of the line sure we'll be putting those in the shredder here in this few minutes really so we're gonna lose the last time we're going to see it in this board shortly we will no longer be a car my goodness I can't wait to see it right so not only is the steel and the metal coming out of the cars but what other products are coming out it's all all kinds of things you can imagine there's plastic in the cars there's the cushions there's the leather seat covers there's foam the dashboard material anything that you can think of it would be in the car it's separated out this process so all at all what about 80 90 percent of the car is recyclable I would say probably about 75 to 80 percent are really good scenarios recyclable so instead of sticking a huge car in a landfill you bring it to a place like yours and you'll shred it for I thought absolutely bring it on over pretty hot over Oh alrighty so now we're going to follow the process of steel since 70% of it is steel sure we're going to go follow that and yeah that's on the other side of the facility so let's walk over there and take a look at it all right sound good hi Brian we're on the back side of the shredder now and obviously piles of metal behind us this is all the steel that's left over after we shut off the cars in fact here's a piece of a car frame that was shredded up Wow heavy - Wow so the grinder just beat this to death that's right it grinds it up until it's small enough to fit through these big grates that are inside the shredder that are made out of manganese they're very hard and very thick so when the pieces are small enough they fit through the grate they come out and that's what you have let's go on we have a cute car that just went through right picks up and slows down as the process grinds the cars up this is how the material comes out in the end it's ready to be shipped to a customer that's going to take it and make a new steel product ok this customer words and where's it at right behind me right behind me yeah we have to have it we're happy to have our own stove right next door that's not ours it belongs to a company called tamko we ship a lot of our product right next door to them so I wonder what all these cars are going to become you'll have to wait and find out maybe facility help but - let's drive over to tamko roof but but not in this fun facts fun facts fun facts here's your fun fact every year we save enough energy recycling steel to supply a city as big as Los Angeles with nearly a decade's worth of electricity so what do you think a trunk hmm offender a hood I don't know all right so tell I'm over at Tam go with Jamie now Jamie you had us put on these lab coats why do we have these lab coats on they're flame-retardant so when we go into the melt shop and we melt all this scrap steel down if any sparks come out you don't get burned thank you very much for having us put these on keep us protected you're welcome Joel all right so now Pacific Coast showed us how they turn the car into what's behind us what are you going to do with this we take the scrap metal and we melt it down and then turn it into rebar Reba what's Reborn rebar is what's used in the construction industry for building buildings and bridges and highways when the car is recycled what new product can it become new parts an electric another car can be made out of that those pieces and count another new car so an old car will end up in somebody's house or on another freeway building applause pretty interesting and we're gonna see that processing we're going to see how we melt scrap and turn into rebar alright Jamie they're in addition to recycling cars you also recycle railroad wheels when a rail car is used up you can see these wheels are worn out they'll disassemble the rail car and sell it to us you have quite a few wheels here yeah there's quite a few rail cars tied up in this Wow can you do you actually get whole rail cars no we don't but there's companies that disassemble disassembled now in addition to these I see behind me all these tin cans tin cans that's right Wow so you will take these and put these through the melting process as well huh that's correct we'll put those in the electric arc furnace and turn them into rebar so this is not aluminum cans this is your like cups of soup and yeah you can see in here there's soup cans there's aerosol spray cans a glass cleaner yeah anything that's any of these containers are made out of steel we'll go through the collection facilities get separated out so when you put a tin can and your recycling bin in your kitchen ultimately it's gonna end up here all right pretty cool so let's go and see the furnace process okay let's see the furnace huh look at my new Pogo with shoes no I'm kidding this is a shock off of a car spring off of a car and guess what it's recyclable too scrapp dumpings you also do larger pieces like to try describe that comes from once it stuffed in the bucket what happens from here we'll pick that scrap bucket up with a crane and then we'll our furnace from there it gets melted fun facts fun fact fun facts here's your fun fact in one year the United States recycling of Steel saved enough energy to heat and light 18 million homes Jimmy what happens if I touch this button right here you better not touch any of that some Joel oh no you don't want an accident here we don't want to wreck anything today all right so we're in the what control tower this is the control room of the arc furnace and I assume below us is the arc furnace that's correct we use electricity to melt the steel now I see it like it looks like a lava pouring out right there what do we look at that's slag so anything that isn't metal floats to the top and then gets poured off onto the ground no you earlier I was asked you about these these cool glasses yeah right there sure so that's how you could what are those for if you flip those down then you can look at any of the hot things like that without hurting your eyes you can look through if we want oh if I want yeah here we go so I just would clip these I'm sure you know those out and now haha oh you can look at the hot steel yeah all right so we're shutting now do you wear these glasses yeah wicked huh pretty cool huh so do you wear these glasses all the time they you have to wear you only wear them if you're looking at the molten stuff you can see Pedro here is using his glasses to to look at the slag and look in the furnace what does it mean to tap the heat explosion or I don't know water right maybe tap water you got me there I got a good one how's it going it's a good one okay I will research your dad you get back to me I'll get back to you give me your number the steel that's in the furnace is called the heat and then what he's gonna do is tap it and that basically means pour it out ooh so - I like tech Turner's yeah tap the heat all right all right so Jamie I pulled my glasses my your glasses back down and what are these things right here those are the electrodes and all they're the things that make the electric arc it's made out of graphite same stuff as in your pencil really that's right so your pencil is fireproof is that what you're telling me yeah it's like a big 24 inch around a piece of pencil like so this is like when everybody clears the floor and oh yeah they all get out of the way at this point there we go like a volcano you guys see this all the time there's like no big deal for you guys but Oh every time it takes about an hour to make a batch of steel or a heat as we call it and so we do that about every hour okay Joel you want to turn the furnace on do I want to turn the furnace on show me what to do right here okay pull that lever right there and it's going to turn it on you to this like this all right like this circle lights lit up I'd say now they're gonna go in and melt everything up huh that's right oh my goodness those gotta be huh so the arc is being created at the end of those electrodes that's right and the arc is about 10,000 degrees and that's what melts the steel and that's about the same temperature as the surface of the Sun so when you set an hour this is the part that takes an hour to melt no the whole process from from melting it to pouring it out to the time when you loaded up a scrap and melt another one takes about an hour looks like one gigantic volcano again actually it's hotter than a volcano volcano is only about 1500 degrees and that's three thousand and where will this ladle end up going now we're going to take it up to the continuous caster where we're going to turn it into the fillings what is a billet a dog without a tail women nuts hunting I don't know what it would it explodes okay Brandon wheel there you go molten steel into a machine called the continuous caster and that's going to turn that liquid steel into solid chunks of Steel called billets that we use to make repo so what's a billet fulfill it is a big 20 foot long by five inch square chunk of steel that we've solidified on the caster and it weighs about one ton car is becoming a bill you see even they've gone green whoa Joel look that's hot don't touch that hi Janie that's a billet huh that's a billet so this is you say each one of these weighs a thousand pounds about 4 mm so about one ton time two thousand pounds yeah you said they're going to squeeze it what we're going to do is we're going to watch them bring that into the rolling mill it will run through rolls it'll squish it and elongate it and it's going to go through a bunch of different steps in the rolling mill that when it comes out the end it's going to be about this big around so we're going to take something that's about this big around and squeeze it down to be in my district around Wow Jamie you guys actually recycle your byproducts also that's correct making steel obviously you can see in the furnace makes a lot of smoke and dust and so we have a giant bag house which is the machine that you see behind us all the ductwork coming down through some fans into this bag house it's like a giant vacuum cleaner and it's got thousands of pegs and it kind of like the bag in your vacuum cleaner and what that does is it pulls all the dust out of the mell chop and then we collected fun facts unpacked fun facts here's your fun fact during World War two salvaging metal scraps from corsets saved enough metal to build two warships okay so we've heated the billet back up to 2,000 degrees and it's coming into the rolling mill wow that's going to go through these stands and these big rolls are gonna are gonna we're going to squeeze the village elongated stretch it to smaller size Wow every time it goes through one of these stands it gets a little smaller I can see that the water to cool cool all the machinery it's twisted and going in the role that helped shape deal into the correct shape thousand people so like the side I still 20 foot long billets have turned into thousand feet long rebar that's right Wow you're quiet yeah it's going about about 25 or 30 miles an hour when it comes out of the mill there's a obviously we can't fit a thousand feet on this cooling bed so it cuts it into two hundred and forty foot pieces and this and this machine helps take that bar that's going 30 miles an hour and stops it and then now it walks across the bed so it cools off so they've already been cut when they're coming out of here right that's right so these are 240 feet long single pieces that's right and each basically each groove had the entire billet in it so we stretched out all three of these at equal 2,000 feet it would equal a four of these would equal a thousand feet four of these equal T which is one billet that's right and each each one of these has three pieces of rebar in it so really there's three thousand feet of rebar that comes from one billet oh my goodness they're huge yep we obviously did a really hot stuff yeah they're cooling down as they as they walk across this machine and by the time they get to the other side they're cool enough that they're no longer like a piece of spaghetti and we can we can cut it into 20-foot or 40 foot or 60 foot pieces which is what our customers want to buy okay so now obviously the last ones right there now will this thing up oh yeah it's just going to walk its way off huh that's right so when he gets enough bars he'll he'll run it over and it will go through a machine that'll just cut them just like it scissors really yep right in front of us here down there also they go further down yeah yep these there's conveyer rolls and it'll take that whole layer of rebar and roll it on down to the machine which will cut it 60-foot pieces are the most common end use for our customers freeways buildings and you gave me one of these there's a piece of rebar place what it is the rebar and this is what holds up the buildings of freeways it's what you put in time freak and that's what the reinforced concrete is that's which is in buildings and freeways has concrete and the rebar is what gives it its strength I can't bend it it's pretty tough stuff it's not 2,000 degrees you cooled it down for me we cool it down now you can't bend it any more but you know what though I could play drums with up it but it's still flexible enough that if there were an earthquake they actually been pretty well oh okay that's keeps things from falling apart if you have an earthquake as well Wow Danny thank you very much for taking this to the classes it's hard to believe that this was once a car that's right in the middle and all the other things and so we melted it down and we turn it into rebar thank you very much you're welcome Wow I'll just look at all these cars I wanted a brine from Pacific Coast and Jamie from tamko for teaching us how they turn cars into rebars and I especially want to thank you Cheyenne for sending us on today's curiosity quest you know if you're curious about something and you want to send us on a green quest go to KBC org click on the curiosity quest link and simply tell me what you're curious about and who knows it could be you that sends us on our next great adventure well remember it is our planet and it's our responsibility to take care of our planet so I'm curious have you gone green I'm Joel Green and I'll see you next time I can't exactly drive away in these can i oh you well unfortunately everything has it in including this car you

Channel: Chula Vista Clean & Green

Views: 1,211,797

Rating: 4.2620087 out of 5

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Id: NQHKUpwMboY

Length: 26min 14sec (1574 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 01 2015