RAUPE (Recycling of Automotive Parts Evaluator)

Automobiles are high-quality products consisting of valuable raw materials as well as product components manufactured with a high level of expertise and energy. As soon as an automobile can no longer be repaired economically and is disposed of, potentially valuable and still functional components are lost. Alternatively, they can be reintroduced into a new "reuse" utilisation cycle.

This is where RAUPE comes in, a result of application-oriented research work as a platform called RAUPE (Recycling of Automotive Parts Evaluator) for decision support in the reuse of automotive spare parts for workshops, dismantling companies and end users. During normal maintenance and repair intervals, workshops generally only use expensive and often raw material and energy-intensive new parts. However, used spare parts can be just as suitable, but are often neither offered nor used. The RAUPE platform development project compares various used car spare parts and their CO₂ emissions and savings when their service life is extended compared to new parts. Raupe is a sole research product of Cascade Use. They were supported by the practice partners Callparts (provision of the database) and ID Impuls (commissioned software programming).

The aim of RAUPE is to use fewer raw materials and therefore less energy and to avoid emissions by reusing intact and equally safe components instead of installing new parts. RAUPE thus promotes cascade utilisation in the automotive sector and contains a wealth of information on life cycle assessments from individual car parts.

This platform includes car parts from all cars dismantled in Germany and generally covers components and materials such as alternators, electric motors, copper, steel, etc. The spare parts in the database correspond to the average of the car parts dismantled in Germany by the 100 Callparts partners over the last 10 years and contain almost every car brand that is recycled in Germany. RAUPE therefore has the advantage that car parts can be recorded and assessed for their environmental and raw material balance regardless of brand. In this way, for example, an "average of brand-independent car parts" is possible for the environmental assessment. As RAUPE admits "user generated content", RAUPE is designed to "learn" over time as each user can enter new data, making the tool more accurate and reliable over the course of the utilisation phase. Non-functional components are replaced by the specialist company after a complaint is made in return for a guarantee (1 year).

The outstanding unique selling point is that RAUPE is the first digital, sustainable decision-making support for all types (including hybrid and electric) of used vehicles and their spare parts management to be developed for the German used car parts market. RAUPE not only focuses on bulk metals such as steel and aluminium, but also places an emphasis on conflict and critical raw materials that will play an increasingly important role in the future, such as cobalt in batteries. In addition to economic and ecological factors, social factors also play a role.

With the help of the RAUPE database, end users can

• end users can research used spare parts and weigh up the cost, reliability and environmental aspects when deciding whether to use these or brand-new spare parts when repairing their vehicle. If necessary, they can request used parts directly from their workshop.
• the garage can offer the end customer used spare parts with high reliability and a guarantee (usually 1 year).
• the dismantler can decide whether he can generate revenue from dismantled components.

A previously Excel-focused industry is now becoming much more efficient through digitalisation and is contributing to the overall benefit to society by extending the service life and the associated savings in raw materials and energy used in the life cycle.

To crown the Cascade Use research group, this RAUPE research result was honoured by the BMWi. On 31 January 2019, Oliver Wittke, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), presented the German Raw Material Efficiency Award 2018 to three medium-sized companies and a single research institution: Cascade Use from the University of Oldenburg. We are very proud of this award and would like to thank everyone who has supported us over the past few years.

With the German Raw Material Efficiency Award, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy honours outstanding examples of raw material and material-efficient products, processes or services as well as application-oriented research results.

Find out more in the video about RAUPE (on YouTube).

The official video of the award ceremony (on YouTube).

The BMWi reports on the award ceremony:
www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Pressemitteilungen/2019/20190131-wittke-verleiht-deutschen-rohstoffeffizienz-preis-2018.html

Information on the Raw Material Efficiency Award:
www.deutscher-rohstoffeffizienz-preis.de/DREP/DE/Home/rep_node.html

Official flyer on RAUPE (PDF,1.1MB).

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