Automotive Shredder Residue

Automotive shredder residue, or ASR, is the mixed material left over after an end-of-life vehicle is shredded and its large metal pieces are pulled out for recycling. It is the plastics, rubber, glass, textiles, foam and fiber that make up the rest of the car once the steel and aluminium are gone.

Because a modern vehicle is a composite of dozens of materials, the residue is by nature heterogeneous and hard to sort. That is exactly what makes it difficult to recycle by conventional means — and why it has historically been landfilled.

What Ends Up in the Pile

The composition varies, but ASR typically contains a mix of plastics and elastomers, glass, fibres and foam, along with small residual metal fragments that survived the primary separation step. The energy value sits in the polymers and rubber; the recyclability sits in the trapped metals and the mineral fraction.

Understanding that split matters, because it points to the right recovery route. The polymers carry the thermal value, the residual metals carry the commodity value, and the mineral or glass fraction can be recovered as aggregate.

From Waste Problem to Feedstock

The same properties that make ASR hard to recycle — mixed, energetic, mineral-bearing — are the properties gasification is designed for. In an oxygen-limited thermal process, the residue separates back into energy, metals and a stable aggregate instead of going to landfill.

Learn More About Automotive Shredder Residue Recovery

• Automotive Shredder Residue Gasification Plant
• Solid Waste Recycling
• What Is Gasification?
• Feasibility Studies

Partner With The KleanTeam to Stop Landfilling ASR

Safe. Clean. Profitable. One Proven Partner.

Klean Industries has operated a commercial automotive-shredder-residue gasification reference plant that turns this hardest-to-recycle stream into recovered metals, glass aggregate, zinc and electricity — proving ASR is a feedstock, not a landfill liability.

Klean’s Key Advantages:

• ✅ An operating ASR gasification reference plant treating up to 20 t/h of shredder residue.
• ✅ Thirty-plus years engineering commercial gasification and waste-to-energy plants.
• ✅ 3 recovered carbon black (rCB) plants built in India over the past 2 years.
• ✅ KleanLoop blockchain provides end-to-end feedstock traceability.

Ready to turn automotive shredder residue into value?

Speak with a Solid Waste Expert at Klean Industries » GO.