The 12,000 hour answer to circularity in aerospace
Everything you could possibly want to know about aerospace circularity.
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Derk-Jan (DJ) van Heerden, Founder of Aircraft End-of-Life Solutions (AELS). AELS is a company, based in The Netherlands, that recycle aeroplanes in order to help with more efficient circularity in the aerospace industry.
We spoke about all things circular economy, ways to scale recycling and reusables, and what he wants to see for the future of circularity in aerospace.
HEATHER: Hi DJ! Can you give us a quick intro to yourself and AELS?
DJ: My name is Derk-Jan van Heerden. People call me DJ, especially the non-Dutch speakers… 42 years young. And after graduation on the subject of aircraft recycling in 2005 I started a company called Aircraft End-of-Life Solutions (AELS) where we recycle aeroplanes as clearly as possible.
H: That sounds exciting! So, circular economy, even those of us in this space really wouldn’t think of aeroplanes straight after hearing circular. Can you give us an overview of circularity in the context of aerospace?
DJ: Circularity is all about closing the loop and, in that way, it goes further than recycling or cradle to cradle, as it also aims at reuse of components and complete assets. Within aviation, of course, there are expensive assets that need to earn their money over their lifetime, typically around 20–25 years.
During the time, they change roles, where they go from a high level passenger airline to a tier two, tier three holiday airline up to conversion into a cargo aircraft but keep on flying. In the end, they will stop flying and one of the great things about aviation is that when it comes to circularity, there is a lot of effort required to keep aeroplanes air worthy, safe and reliable.
H: So how can you ensure you’re getting the most life out of the aeroplane as possible?
DJ: To operate efficiently and reliably, as in that they don’t break down too often and because of reliability demands, when a part breaks down, you want to replace it as soon as possible. Because an aircraft is very expensive, you do not have one standing by just in case, e.g. if there is a flat tire, you want to replace that flat tire ASAP. Because of this, there is a big industry involved in getting enough spare parts all over the place so that aeroplanes keep on flying up to 16, 17, 18 hours per day.
Also, as aircrafts get older, the supply chains making those parts will also start to focus on other, newer aircraft models. So disassembling the older aircraft from a variant model creates additional stock that makes it possible to keep those other aeroplanes operating. And that’s an amazing economical model — which is a result of a combination of reliability, safety, and the high value of those assets and the cost of delays, especially in certain areas of the world where the fines for a delay are significant. So, spending some money on having an additional spare wheel or spare altimeter at a remote base makes a lot of sense as an insurance for those unexpected malfunctions.
So that’s the subject of reusing. So you can reuse the whole aircraft, you can turn it into a freighter but you can also reuse the parts and things on there. And then what’s left, there’s a lot of material there that can also be recycled, as in regaining new material, or remelting it or turning it into something that can be used as a virgin material for creating new stuff. And unfortunately, that doesn’t happen a lot within the aviation industry yet. So it’s not that the aircraft aluminium that we recycle ends up in new aircraft and being manufactured, but it does end up in other products like pens and window frames and race bikes and whatever. And then of course, you’ve got the alternative reuse. There’s a lot of aviation enthusiasts out there. People love aeroplanes, people love aircraft. They have an emotional relationship with them. They are interested in having a piece of aviation in their house as a souvenir. So that also happens, but it’s not a very big industry.
H: So have you seen more and more businesses getting into this since the time that you started entering it? I mean, AELS, isn’t the only company doing this?
DJ: The reason we started was because we saw an increase in demand in Europe, which was a result of a liberalisation of the aviation market that happened in Europe later than it happened in the US. Because of a lack of liberalisation, every country had their own flag carrier supported by their governments and therefore they had financial means to buy newer aircraft all the time. As a result, their assets typically got replaced way too early and they then continued to operate in other countries like Africa, Asia, or South America, or back to the US where there are also airlines that keep on flying older assets, the US Air Force is a great example.
When that changed, we felt that there was a requirement for additional capacity for end of life management for aircraft in Europe. In the last 10–15 years, there has been a continuous story of a flood wave of aircraft becoming end-of-life. Because if you look at aircraft manufactured over time, if you take an effort of 25 years until their end of life, then the increase of production 25 years ago, should now automatically result in a flow of aircraft being end-of-life.
The big question is, is that really the case? Because if you look over time, how many aircraft were disassembled, the correlation seems to be different. Of course, there is this parking process where aeroplanes are being parked. So there is an interesting question there: how many aircraft are we talking about, what’s the variation there? Which is influenced by things like fuel price, production capacity at Airbus and Boeing, and demand for tickets, obviously.
But it’s also influenced by the demand for spare parts. So some aeroplane aircraft stay parked because they’re in the category. Yes, maybe there are a few parts that can be reused, but the value of those parts are lower than the cost of disassembling the aircraft. And it’s an older vintage aircraft. For example, if you now have one of the last Boeing 727’s, and you park it, nobody’s going to have large requirements for those components, because 727 simply isn’t flying anywhere. So there is also a life curve, there’s a bell curve, if you like, where there is a sweet spot, where the business model works very well. And then there is this area where it doesn’t work. And aeroplanes become a cost to take apart. Because there’s also hazardous materials to dispose and you’re dealing with the labour cost to make it smaller, and stuff like that.
H: And so when you do get to the point where you are taking the aeroplane apart, what does it take to recertify the parts to get them back into use.
DJ: So when an aeroplane is manufactured, an OEM or a part supplier to Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, whoever, they write a so called CMM — a Component Maintenance Manual, which they design because they know that parts every now and then break down and they want to support their customer in such a way that they don’t have to manufacture all those parts that are not throwaway items, because those individual items can be expensive as well. So there is already a process in place to recertify, repair and overhaul components, just by operating an aircraft and every now and then somebody spills coffee or something else happens that breaks down.
So basically, what we do with our parts removal is that we tap into that supply chain. The difference is however that if a part breaks down it gets removed from the aircraft there’s always a repair required, or there’s always an overhaul required if it’s due for such an event, in our case they are working as they are removed from an active aircraft.. So if the CMM consists of different steps, then one of the final steps is a check to see if it works. So our parts typically enter that final phase first. And if there’s nothing wrong with it, they can certify it right away. Maybe there’s some cleaning involved or something but not always opening it up. Not always replacing filters or stuff like that.
H: What happens to the components that aren’t reused or re-certified?
DJ: They get recycled as much as possible. So we’re always stuck with a complete aircraft because a hull or a wing is not reused. Though we have now somebody that’s willing to buy two wings, first time for everything. So, basically we remove as much materials as possible in such a way that we create buckets of materials, which makes economic sense. So, either is required for safety reasons. For example, isolation blankets we remove because if we start chopping an aeroplane isolation blankets are light, they might get blown away, they end up on the runway and a lot of accidents can happen. So we remove the light material to avoid it blowing away during the actual scrapping of the remaining airframe.
Wiring is removed at the one end, because there’s copper, the wiring going to the copper recycling process, but also, because the wires go from front to back on the aircraft. If you chop an aeroplane up, and you miss a few wires, and when you pick up the grabber, bunch of aluminium, you lift it up, all those wiring are still attached to the aircraft, you pull the aircraft away and a lot of things can go wrong. So there’s also a combination of recycling but also safety. And then of course, there’s still the materials that we can’t recycle because they have no route towards some sort of new virgin material that can create a new product, either in aviation or in another industry.
H: You previously mentioned specialty equipment for recycling — is there any way to get this to scale better? Thinking about different materials used in the planes, what needs to be done so that recycling and reuse can scale.
DJ: So when it comes to the reuse of parts, we follow the aircraft maintenance manual, so any instruction by Boeing, Airbus and given to aircraft producers, saying if you do this you need to deal with in this way, we need to follow as well. There’s one difference obviously, if we remove something, we don’t put another part in place. So that does bring certain challenges. For example, landing gear, if we remove the landing gear, we’re not going to put another landing gear under it. So we follow the AMM, in such a way that the landing gear is still not treated improperly. But just to make sure we continue to process because if you don’t put a gear on it, the aeroplane will drop to the ground. And if you use a jack, and then you start cutting, then the jack will get damaged. So we need to have a solution for that. And we use sleepers for that process as a replacement for the gear, railway sleeper.
When it comes to material recycling, basically what happens is we tap into the industry where material recycling happens for other products — think about cars, washing machines, household infrastructure, all that stuff that you throw away some of them once every 10 years some stuff on a weekly basis. For example, a computer in a cockpit can be recycled by the same process where they do print boards from your laptop and your telephone. So we tap into that. But it also means that we are limited by the equipment and the settings and the financial mechanisms behind those supply chains. But also that infrastructure and the technology.
For example, a lot of those shredder companies that shred cars and stuff, at the end they use a magnet to take out to steel, they use an eddy current to separate metal from non-metal, that is obviously optimised for the recycling of cars and washing machines with a high steel content but you can take it out with a magnet. Aircraft have a high aluminium content. So they do need to slow down the process because the bucket aluminium, which is typical when they recycle cars, can’t handle a flow of something with 80% aluminium in it. So they need to slow it down a little bit or they need to at least make sure that the guy who’s removing the aluminium that comes out that he moves a bit of it faster than he normally does.
But in talking about the limitations of the process — that also means that the aluminium of aircraft is mixed with other aluminium which is positive because there’s currently not a way to recycle aircraft aluminium in such a way that you can produce new aircraft aluminium. This is because the different alloys in an aircraft are attached to each other, and they’re very difficult to separate. And if you can separate them then sorting it becomes a challenge. So that’s where the opportunities are if you want to raise the bar and get aircraft aluminium back to new aircraft, but then you end up with a lot of, let’s say, supply chain business case issues about quantity of the material to be able to optimise your aluminium melt or to optimise your shorting mechanism, because a lot of aluminium needs to flow through that system to pay for the investments required to do that.
H: So one last question — What do you want to see for the future of circularity in aerospace?
DJ: I wish that aviation realises that we have a bad story, when it comes down to co2 production, growth, and the speed we can introduce new technologies, and maybe the impossibility of electric flying and hydrogen flying. So there is some greenwashing going on.
Recycling of aircraft is, however, a success story. If you look at it, a lot of industries are jealous. So going forward, I wish aviation would say we’re good at recycling, we do a fantastic job. However, we can do an even better job. And take that more seriously because at the moment, we, the recycling and disassembly company, are responsible for the cost and the whole process. But we haven’t flown the aircraft for 25 years, we haven’t manufactured the aeroplane, but everything they put on there and did with it, we need to clean up. So if we get a little bit more money, and we’re willing to invest, for example, in those systems, we can make the story even better, we already a front runner, but we can also be a more a front runner, in new technologies in new supply chains, making it possible to raise the bar even more.
And that will not cost a lot of money. For example, if our friends at the OEMs would say to every aircraft buyer, you’re also going to pay an additional $50,000 — $100,000, and that’s a number we’re talking about which is close to nothing compared to the price of a new aeroplane, it’s peanuts or pocket change. And that they say you will get it back at the moment you make sure the aircraft is recycled according to the highest standards, then we need to have a system that defines the higher standards. And I think we have that.
And that money can then be used by businesses like ours to raise the bar and the best technology so that we keep on getting those funds. And then the industry can say look, you’re not getting 50k 100k extra, but it’s not going in your pocket. That doesn’t make any sense — you still need to then raise the bar. So if you would ask me “what would I like the aviation sector to do” I’d say to see this as an opportunity to get real green points (not greenwashing points) and try to figure out a way that industry can take a good look at the aeroplane and make sure that we do that extra step that we can recycle isolation blankets, something with the aluminium, etc.
Of course it needs to be holistic, it needs to make sense and it needs to take into account the environmental footprint. We should not fly aeroplanes to one place and then take the extra co2 consumption just to do the aluminium recycling a little bit better. But yeah — that’s my dream.
For more information about Metta and the work we do, head to our website. Check out our podcast Metta Talks to hear the latest about startups, innovation, and sustainability. The team is also on Twitter — reach out to us @mettatalks.
Want to learn more about Metta? Let’s talk 🗣
Heather Baden — heather@metta.partners | linkedin.com/in/heatherbaden
