Steve Kay reports
from Hamburg
27
November 2009 - The first ever Carbon Fibre Recycling and Reuse Conference, organised
by Intertech Pira, was held in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg in early November.
Over 50 delegates from all over the world attended the one and a half day
conference, which featured over a dozen presentations on subjects such as an
overview of the different recycling technologies available, operational
challenges, and end user perspectives.
The use of carbon fibre reinforced
composites has been growing steadily for several years, and this growth looks
set to accelerate in the future as technology advances open up new end uses and
markets. One industry analyst forecasts this growth to be from around 170
million lbs in 2009 to somewhere in the region of 270 million lbs by 2013.
However, hand in hand with this growth comes the problem of how to process both
manufacturing waste and end-of-life goods in an environmentally responsible way.
Recycling
technologies
Dr. Steve Pickering, of the University of
Nottingham, both chaired the conference and gave the opening presentation. His
presentation looked at the various technologies available to recyclers, and
concluded that there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution: for instance, processes
suitable for waste/reject goods deliver very low degradation in key fibre
properties (<3% for supercritical fluid processing), whereas processes
better suited for ‘end-of-life’ material may reduce strength by 25%-50% due to
mechanical damage and fibre oxidation.
Steve Line, CEO of the West Midlands based company
Recycled Carbon Fibre Ltd., told delegates that his company had the world’s
first continuous commercial scale carbon fibre recycling line, and posed the
question of how to establish a baseline price for recycled carbon fibre. Despite
the diverse nature of the feedstock, with little or no information on the
strength properties of the original fibre, RCF claim to retain upwards of 90%
of the strength of typical virgin carbon fibre.
Aircraft
Bill Carberry, Boeing’s Airplane and
Composite Recycling Program Manager, who is also a deputy director of the
Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA), made a number of interesting
points. First among these, he stated that the members of AFRA recycled 220,000
tonnes of aluminium in 2008: as aluminium is replaced by (albeit lighter
weight) composites in the next generation of aircraft, the carbon fibre
recycling industry will be presented with a stiff challenge if it is going to
keep pace with demand. Second, he stressed that whilst Boeing’s current
developments were very much centred on composites, aircraft manufacturers would
always use the best material available for the purpose and there was no
guarantee that this will always be carbon fibre.
Day 1 closed with two complementary
presentations from researchers at London’s Imperial College. Soraia Pimento is
engaged in research into analysing failure mechanisms under different stress
conditions, and explained that irregular alignment and density of recycled
fibres were the main causes of the reduction in strength relative to virgin
fibre. Silvestre Pinho’s work built on this primary research by developing
models that will enable predictions of performance to be made. This information
can then inform the design of reclamation/recycling systems to give the optimum
outputs.
Pete George from Boeing’s Research and
Technology division started day 2 with a look at some aircraft parts that might
be made from recycled carbon. Obviously these would not include major
structural assemblies, but might well be items such as armrests (a prototype
was passed around the conference room) and overhead stowage bins. Pete George
argued that the goal of recycling for the aircraft industry should be to
reclaim material in a way that substantially retains the value and attributes
of the original material and can be integrated into existing markets.
Automotive
Moving from the aerospace sector into motor
racing, James Meredith from Warwick University outlined the role of recycled
carbon fibre in World F3rst, a sustainable Formula 3 racing car. In addition to
‘non safety critical’ bodywork parts such as the engine cover being made from
recycled carbon, the car has a number of other sustainable credentials
including a steering wheel made of Curran® - a material derived from the pulp
of root vegetables - and a seat whose is base made from a woven flax fibre
prepreg material covered in SoyFoam, a
soya bean derived foam.
Continuing the
automotive theme, Nick Warrior of the University of Nottingham spoke about his
collaboration with Ford on the AFRECAR (Affordable Recycled Carbon Fibres) and
HIRECAR (High Value Composites from Recycled Carbon Fibres) projects. These
projects are looking into ways of resolving the problems of meeting the
requirements of the end-of-life directive (which requires that 95% of all
vehicle materials must be recycled by 2015) and developing affordable
composites for motor vehicles. These projects have been able to produce some
‘demonstrator’ parts by, amongst other things, incorporating fibre in bulk
moulding compounds. Agreeing with the findings of the Imperial College team,
Nick Warrior stressed the importance of optimum fibre alignment as the key to
added value recycled composites.
Building in
additional safety, comfort and emission reduction features has increased the
kerb weight of the average car by 20% since 1985, according to Bern Thoma of
the Fraunhofer Institute. This makes the ‘lightweighting’ potential of
composites a very attractive proposition to the industry: taking the whole of
its life cycle into account, from raw material manufacturing through to
recycling, around 85% of the CO2 emissions of a vehicle will come
from its use, therefore even small savings in weight will have a marked effect
on life cycle CO2 values.
Raw material and sorting
Only by sharing the cost and investment between generator and recycler
can a sustainable revenue chain by established, said Thomas Hunter of carbon fibre recycler Firebird
Advanced Materials.
This presentation outlined the various sources of raw material, and how the
different states it arrives at the recyclers in affect the recycling process.
Hunter came to the conclusion that, until a means of automated sorting can be
devised, the most cost effective way to sort scrap is at the point of
generation, although how to incentivise primary manufacturers to do this was a
real problem.
Tim Rademacker of CFK
Valley Stade Recycling presented a well thought out SWOT analysis of recycled
carbon fibres, pointing out the fact that demand for virgin carbon fibre
running ahead of supply was a real opportunity. CFK are investing heavily in
carbon fibre recycling technology, with a 1000 ton/annum plant due to come on
stream in autumn 2010.
Re-use
Jack Howarth of University
of Sheffield (representing Technical Fibre Products) discussed ways of
incorporating recycled carbon in fuel cell technologies and Electromagnetic
Interference (EMI) applications, whilst concluding that many challenges lay
ahead for the technology, whilst Joseph
Heil of North Carolina State University updated the conference on Vacuum
Assisted Resin Transfer Moulding, Bulk Moulding Compound and Injection Moulding
technology.
The
nature of the difficulties faced by recyclers was highlighted by Dr Jan-Michel
Goseau of Adherent Technologies when he referred to carbon fibre reinforced
composites as “intractable by design”. Referring to his organisation’s early
attempts to recycle manufacturing scrap from a Boeing 787 he raised a laugh
amongst the delegates by saying he was very confident about flying in a
composite aircraft “but about recycling it, much less so!” He also revealed
that Adherent plan to open a 100 ton/annum recycling facility in the near
future.
As the conference closed,
there was general agreement among the delegates that this should not be the
last platform dedicated to the subject of carbon fibre recycling, although
future editions may be incorporated into less highly specialized conferences.
Our correspondent Steve Kay, is Business Development Manager at
Bolton, U.K. based NW Texnet, a leading technical textiles cluster management
organization.
Steve@nwtexnet.co.uk.
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