LEEDS certification for aircraft?

One of the requirements for LEEDS certification of buildings involves establishing a plan for what's done with their materials when they're razed. With all the recent hoopla about "green" airplanes, I'm wondering how LEEDS certifiable our homebuilts are. Since they all use the same engines, wheels & brakes, instruments, wiring, & avionics, I won't be including them in my disertation. We'll focus on airframes for now

All aluminum: definitely, especially if it was never painted. When we decide our plane's number is up, we take it apart, separating the steel fittings and hardware from the aluminum and scrap it. The only thing that will end up in the trash would be the upholstery, and maybe the canopy.

Tube & fabric: probably. The steel tube can be scrapped along with all the steel fittings and hardware. Any aluminum in the wings can be scrapped, too, and any wood can be chipped into mulch, once all the fabric or fiberglass have been peeled off it. But you'll end up with a sizable pile of fabric and maybe some fiberglass, the upholstery, and maybe the canopy. Is there a way to recycle doped Dacron polyester?

All wood: probably. Scrap all the metal fittings and hardware and chip/mulch the wood structure. The trash pile would be comparable to the tube and fabric plane's pile, since most are fabric or glass covered.

Composite: unlikely. Can composites (carbon fiber/aramids/glass/resins/foams) be ground down and recycled, maybe mixed into asphalt, like tires? The metal fittings and hardware can be scrapped, but what about the airframe? If anyone knows of a composite recycling process, please inform us so we'll be assured that those sleek, "green" planes, truly are "green."

Soft landings!

Plasma furnaces. Chop it up, blast it to atoms, turn the output into electricity and marketable materials.

I'm sure I'll find the plasma furnace dealer out in the AirDisney FlyMarket, tucked in between the t-shirt and the non-stick cookware booths.

No. But you will find one at Aberdeen Proving Grounds and two commercial furnaces in Japan. One of these is specifically designed to handle chopped up automobiles -- so it should be able to handle planes. One more was to be built in Florida, with the specific intent of "mining" refuse dumps, at 600 tons per day and producing 22 Megawatts of electricity. County commissioners cancelled the project last year because it was determined that it would be less expensive to open a new dump or ship their trash somewhere else. In addition to Aberdeen, non-commerical (government operated) special purpose furnaces were built in Switzerland, France, and Germany.

Back to green airplanes...the solutions are there, but as long as it is more economical to dump trash than process it, we will just have to deal with airplane boneyards.

I hate to say it, by my little plane is too easy to recycle, as it's aluminum tube and gusset. Remove the engine and mount, take off the axel and wheels, remove nine iron fittings, cut the wires, strip the panel and the fabric and the steel in the rivets is so small a matter they don't count.

If you want to go green, just keep your aircraft properly maintained, it will last forever! Barring a serious crash an airframe can outlive a person with proper maintenance. You will have to deal with avionics swap-outs, that technology has a short life-cycle. Also some items like wiring, fuel system components, and engines parts need replacing over time. That is where the focus for "green" solutions should center for small homebuilt type aircraft.

Joe
:cool:

There is another method. Fishing reefs. The local fishing maps sold in West Marine show "PBY" among other things down there. There is also an entire aircraft carrier 20 miles off Pensacola Beach. Fish need love too.