Development of a vacuum insulation panel detection system for end-of-life refrigerators in Korea: a practical approach

Since 2010, vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) have steadily been used as a main insulator in refrigerators, but interest in the proper recycling of VIPs is lacking. Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop a VIP detection system to determine whether VIPs could be identified in end-of-life refrigerators at the recycling stage. We developed experiments to measure changes in the pressure and thickness of the perforating sidewalls of refrigerators. We conducted a pressure measurement experiment using 30 refrigerators and recorded pressure changes of 3.2 ± 1.1 kPa in the VIP refrigerator group and 0.5 ± 0.8 kPa in the non-VIP group. The mean thickness change for the 14 VIP refrigerators was 10.606 ± 4.128 mm. We conclude that the success rate of the VIP detection system developed in this study in determining VIPs present in refrigerators reached 96.7%. This study provides a basis for developing an infrastructure and environment to recycle end-of-life VIP refrigerators.