Recycling of brake pads is a tough but promising work considering the current end of lifecycle. This study assesses the environmental performance of brake pads made up of recycled friction materials in terms of energy use, CO2 footprint and airborne particle number. Energy use and CO2 footprint are calculated with the data from CES Edupack and airborne emission particle number is measured on a pin-on-disc tribometer. The results demonstrate that recycled pads show better performance on energy consumption and CO2 footprint than virgin pads. These credits primarily come from raw material savings since recycled friction materials involve much less manufacturing processes than virgin ones. The experiment shows that the average airborne particle number of the recycled pad is greater than virgin ones, accompanied by a large scatter. Some more research works are still required to assess the airborne particle emission performance of recycled pads.

Jijie Ma, Department of Machine Design, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Anna Hedlund Åström, Ulf Olofsson, Yezhe Lyu, Jens Wahlström, Mara Leonardi; Jijie Ma, College of Engineering, Zhejiang Normal University, China