NEWS
Putting the Brakes on Waste
Cutting vehicle emissions is possible in ways beyond making changes to engines and fuel. Brake calipers, for instance.
Written by Michael Abrams
THERE IS A FEELING IN THE AUTOMOTIVE WORLD that for the fastest acceleration and the most superior handling, only the finest materials can be used—environmental consequences be damned.
But, it turns out, high performance products don’t have to be highly unsustainable products, at least when it comes to slowing and stopping a car quickly and efficiently. Brembo, the Italian brake manufacturer, whose products can be found on sport and luxury cars with names like BMW, Ferrari and Porsche, as well as Formula One cars, has just come out with a caliper made from 100 percent recycled aluminum. And it performs—and looks—just like its calipers made from the virgin stuff.
“We were looking for ways of reducing drastically the impact on the environment, going towards the direction of the circular economy,” said Dino Maggioni, Brembo’s chief operating officer. “It turned out that using recycled aluminum for our lightweight calipers was the most promising and effective way to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Brembo’s recycled aluminum brakepad. Photo: Brembo
It took the company five years to figure out just how to do that and still have a product that passed all validation criteria.
The challenge was finding a recycled alloy with the same mechanical and chemical characteristics as the primary aluminum they’d been using, but that was also widely available. Eventually they settled on a secondary product found everywhere on the globe, always within a short distance from one of Brembo’s many plants around the world. “The first day that we went to see a smelter recycling aluminum cans and dirty cables and wheels, we were a little bit amazed and a little bit scared,” Maggioni said. “Because, looking at the perfect ingots of primary aluminum was, let’s say, a different view.”
Brembo found 15 suppliers scattered across the planet with a validated product. That material is processed by a supplier before it is delivered to a Brembo plant.
Making the calipers out of the recycled material means that carbon dioxide emissions are slashed up to 70 percent over the lifecycle of the caliper when compared to using a conventional alloy. But the recycled aluminum they chose is just as effective as the fresh aluminum they knew so well—a crucial fact for a crucial product like a brake caliper, especially since the company is using 100 percent recycled aluminum, without a drop of primary aluminum.
“It turned out that using recycled aluminum for our lightweight calipers was the most promising and effective way to reduce our carbon footprint.”
—Dino Maggioni, chief operating officer at Brembo
The new alloy also takes the paint that gives Bembo calipers their distinctive color. “So, we are changing material—drastically changing our process—but aesthetically and functionally, it doesn’t change anything,” Maggioni said. “It’s as perfect and as iconic as it is when done with primary aluminum.”
However, making calipers of the same caliber did require some tweaking of the design. The details of that tweaking are proprietary, but whatever they are, they remain undetectable to the naked eye. “We changed the shape in some functional areas of the caliper in order to be able to maintain the same performance,” said Francesco Cucchi, Brembo’s technical development senior manager. “So, it’s something that a normal customer can’t appreciate.”
There is currently no danger of any kind of dearth for secondhand aluminum. But as Brembo converts its production line, and especially if other industries follow suit, things could change. “We will have to see in the future, if and whether there will be bottlenecks or other issues,” Maggioni said. “So far, there are no shortages of material.”
Brembo’s recycled aluminum caliper is available to any automotive company that wants to use it, but the traditional version made of primary aluminum is still available as well—but perhaps not forever. “We wanted to make the right steps to start a global conversion, but it will take time,” Maggioni said. “But the aim is to convert all our production.”
Already its sustainable calipers are on moving cars, but there’s still room for improvement. “For the future, we are trying to optimize,” Cucchi said. “We’ve been working with standard aluminum for many years, so we are trying to optimize, as much as possible, the time and the cost of the process, and the weight of the caliper.”
Michael Abrams is a technology writer in Westfield, N.J.
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