Ultrastrong, lightweight materials like carbon fiber-reinforced polymers are a key component in tomorrow's technological innovations, and a recent discovery may have the key to improved recycling of these materials for a more sustainable future.
Given its special properties, this new-age composite is highly desirable for applications in the aerospace, automotive, wind power, and sports equipment sectors, as Tech Xplore reported. However, making it comes at a cost.
"Carbon fiber is expensive. It is also energy-intensive to make, so it is not exactly greenhouse gas friendly. Making carbon fiber readily recyclable could help in both these regards," as National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientist Nicholas Rorrer explained.
Electrohydraulic fragmentation has been proposed as a solution, which uses intense shockwave impulses through high-voltage discharge plasmas to separate the material's components, per Tech Xplore's report.
However, a team of researchers from Waseda University in Tokyo, led by Professor Chiharu Tokoro from the Department of Creative Science and Engineering, believe they have a better solution that uses direct electrical pulses.
"In our previous studies, we had already established research expertise in generating shock waves in water using electrical pulse phenomena to efficiently fragment difficult-to-process materials," Tokoro explained, per Tech Xplore.
"However, in applications such as lithium-ion batteries, we discovered that direct discharge, which utilizes Joule heating and vapor expansion of the material itself, is more effective for high-efficiency separation than relying on shock waves. We now apply this approach to CFRP [carbon fiber-reinforced polymer], hypothesizing that it could achieve more efficient separation compared to current methods."
The team's results show that this new method is 10 times more energy efficient at recovering valuable carbon fibers from disused CFRPs. It's also able to preserve long fiber segments that have a high tensile strength and leaves little to no residual resin on the materials after processing.
As an example, CFRPs account for around 50% of the material used in constructing the airplane fuselage for both Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and Airbus' A350 passenger jets. And the overall demand for this material in the aerospace and defence industries is increasing, with a projected 12.5% compound annual growth rate through 2029.
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Less than $30K 🤷 CFRPs are also growing in popularity in the sports industry, including use for high-performance tennis rackets, running shoes, and modern road bikes. But with around 7,000 tonnes (7716.179 tons) of these products reaching end of life each year, recycling is key to keeping the industry sustainable.
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"Our research findings have numerous applications, pertaining to the recycling of CFRPs from spent aircraft components, automotive waste, and wind turbine blades. Thus, the present innovation supports sustainability across industries by enabling efficient resource recovery and reducing environmental impact," Tokoro concluded in the report.
As the technology charges forward, it's our responsibility to ensure that efficient and environmentally clean processes are used to reclaim these valuable resources. This will keep ecosystems safe from pollution while supporting a more sustainable circular economy.
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