The world’s first conference dedicated to carbon fibre recycling, held in Hamburg, Germany on 3 – 4 November 2009, offered a broad analysis of the current recycling technologies, commercial applications, the latest research results and future opportunities in this field.
Dr Steve Pickering opened the conference with a comprehensive overview of the current recycling technologies on offer, illustrating the differences in the processes, the type of output material generated by each of the respective pyrolysis, fluidised bed and thermal fluid bed technologies. This was a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the event and Steve set the scene well in outlining progress to date with CF recycling, but also highlighting the challenges facing this fledgling industry.
Steve Line, CEO of the first fully commercialised recycling plant, Recycled Carbon Fibre Ltd., based in the UK, gave a lively presentation, posing questions from the business perspective, and outlining the difficulties in establishing a baseline price for a recycled product that could (whether rightly or wrongly) be considered inferior to virgin material.
A brighter outlook from Boeing’s Bill Carberry followed the coffee break, giving the aerospace sector’s view on progress to date with recycling aircraft, and passed round a test component chair arm produced from recycled carbon fibre. Bill is also Deputy Director of AFRA, the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association, who have helped develop best practice methodology for many other material and component streams in end of life aircraft. He did make clear however, that while the latest state of the art planes from all mainstream producers were using a high percentage of carbon fibre, aircraft manufacturers would always use the best material for purpose and in the future there was no guarantee that this would be carbon fibre.
Day 1 closed with two complimentary papers from Imperial College London, from Soraia Pimenta and Dr Silvestre Pinho. Soraia presented the results of extensive mechanical testing of composites made using recycling fibres, and analysis of the failure mechanisms involved under different stress conditions. Silvestre’s presentation followed up on this primary research, illustrating how we can use this detailed analysis to build models and predict the performance of composites made from recycled fibres.
Day two opened with one of the world’s most experiences proponents of carbon fibre recycling. Pete George from Boeing has chaired many conference sessions and run workshops on recycling fibre over the last decade, and was an ideal candidate to open the second day of the event. The theme for the morning was to look at key end uses for recycled materials and perspectives from these end user sectors.
Pete talked in detail about Boeing’s current operations in managing their materials flows and gave details of manufacturing demonstrations and proof of concept trials run with partners at recyclers MIT and Recycled Carbon Fibre Ltd. The key point of the presentation was that the recycling process needs to be product oriented – by designing the system to produce materials that can be integrated into existing markets; the barrier to acceptance is reduced significantly.
A World F3rst, at the world’s first carbon fibre recycling conference followed as Dr James Meredith from Warwick University outlined the drivers behind, and the technical challenges of designing and building a sustainable Formula 3 racing car. Although there was resistance to the project, the team have successfully created a competitive car, using a wide variety of natural materials and low carbon alternatives.
Prof Nick Warrior from University of Nottingham began his presentation by saying that update of carbon fibre in the automotive sector was highly dependent of the recyclability of this material. End of life vehicle legislation is already very stringent, and by 2015 a minimum of 95% of vehicle materials must be recycled.
Bernd Thoma from Fraunhofer ICT echoed Nick’s feeling that lightweighting was a significant driver in the automotive sector, and explained in detail the component testing and validation processes. It is clear that the automotive sector is taking very seriously the issue of lightweighting, and the trend for increased levels of composite structures will continue for some time.
The most challenging, yet thought provoking presentation came from Thomas Hunter of Firebird Advanced Materials. His company has been recycling carbon fibre composites for some time, but Thomas cut to the chase in listing the significant challenges that face recyclers, and the need for collaboration and input from up the supply chain. The presentation outlined the various sources of waste material, the different states in which it can arrive at the recycler, and the impact this can have on the recycling process. It is clear that there are significant costs and challenges in sorting and shipping scrap in a format that is easy to recycle.
Tim Rademacker of CFK Valley Stade Recycling outlined their future plans with a highly market-focused presentation. Valley Stade’s parent company has an extensive experience with waste management and recycling of other materials, and it’s clear that they have applied their knowledge to the carbon fibre manufacturing stream. The key to establishing this market for recycled fibre products is achieving consistency in product quality and supply, while developing customer-oriented products.
Jack Howarth from University of Sheffield, representing Technical Fibre Products and Joseph Heil, North Carolina State University explored alternative applications and methods for producing electromagnetic shielding and bulk moulding compounds. There is clearly a good amount of academic research going on to analyse material properties of recycled carbon fibre products, and as a result generate new possibilities and markets for recycled material.
Another stalwart of this industry, Dr Jan-Michel Goseau of Adherent Technologies gave an update on his company’s latest developments in dealing with end of life materials and production scrap from the 787 Dreamliner. Given the unique nature of the 787 scrap, a new approach has been developed, a multi-stage recycling process that is able to take account of the thermoplastic toughened layers between the standard epoxy composite.
This comprehensive agenda was complemented by many networking opportunities throughout the conference. Attending companies included Apple, Astrium Space Transportation, Dassault Aviation, Duerr Systems GmbH, Mitsubishi Rayon Co Ltd, Toho Tenax Europe GmbH and many others.
The second edition of this very successful event will be incorporated into the 13th Global Outlook for Carbon Fibre conference, also organised by IntertechPira in autumn 2010 in Europe.
The more detailed report can be downloaded from www.cfrecycling.com
