The SENTRY Project dealt with the dismantling, recycling and environmental assessment of the End of Life (EoL) phase of “Demonstrator” panels, a subcomponent of “low weight metallic fuselage section” named B2, which has been manufactured within the Eco-Design for Airframe (EDA) activity in the Clean Sky programme.

The SENTRY Project assessed the current end of life management practices, namely operations associated to aircraft part dismantling and processes associated to material recycling, and will propose the necessary changes for satisfying an optimal low weight panel dismantling and light metallic alloys recycling. The proposed new procedures were tested with a live panel dismantling experiment, at an accredited EoL aircraft manager facility, where parts will be identified, separated, sorted and pre-treated (de-coated, shredded, etc.) in order to satisfy input specifications of metal smelters that recycle them. The separated metallic fractions were processed in a pilot melting facility and the produced metallic alloys characterised in order to validate their close loop recycling as better alternative than the downgrading practice. During dismantling and recycling activities, materials and energy flows, emissions and waste generation will be inventoried in order to complete the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the EoL of the “B2 Demonstrator” panels that will be compared with the one of a reference panel.

The final results were the definition of the new EoL schemes for the “B2 Demonstrator” panels. The assessment of the environmental impacts related to the new EoL allowed the identification of those activities with a strong environmental impact and the definition of eco-design solutions to optimise potential reuse/recycling of metallic materials.