Development of a vacuum insulation panel recycling system for end-of-life refrigerators in Korea: cutting, detaching, and separation technologies

The vacuum insulation panel (VIP) used to insulate the inside of refrigerators is made of glass fiber and requires detecting and separating before physical shredding in recycling stage. In this study, we developed pilot facilities consisting of cutting, detaching the outer plate of the refrigerator, and separating the VIP to secure core materials for recycling and/or reuse. For this purpose, we estimated operational capacity using ten refrigerator samples by measuring the takt time in both the unit and continuous processes. According to the results, the mean takt time in the unit process was 203.7 s for cutting, 226.0 s for detaching, and 54.2 s for separating, respectively. The continuous process (integrated cutting and detaching) required 429.7 s per unit. These findings are significant, as this is the first practical study with pilot facilities in South Korea on embedded VIPs in end-of-life refrigerators.