Carbon Fiber Composites Recycling: Researchers Develop New Method To Decompose Complex Form

Carbon fiber combination is powerful than steel and lighter than aluminum, it can simply be recycled into new medium just as strong and healthy as the originals. However, carbon fiber supported plastics are being favored in many industries.

Carbon fiber supported plastics are very troublesome to decompose or recycle, and discarding of them has become a growing concern. The type of plastic used in milk bottles can be liquefied and simply re-utilized. These types of plastics cannot simply be converted back to their original materials.

As mentioned in Phys.org, a research group for the first time has evolved an encouraging method to recycle the favored carbon fiber plastics that are utilized in everything from recent airplanes and generous interests of the wind energy industry. The work gives a systematic method to re-utilize the costly carbon fiber and other materials that form the composites.

The researchers mostly have attempted powder by crushing them down mechanically or decomposition with very high temperature to retrieve the costly carbon fiber. The burning chemicals are dangerous and very difficult to decompose. They have also demolished the matrix resin substances in the composites, making a dirty mixture of chemicals and an extra waste problem.

According to Composites world, carbon fiber combinations can be deformed into a fine powder, but combinations made with short fibers are lacking the power to perform. The plastic material that obtains its physical strength from attached carbon fibers. These combination materials are costly but often utilized wherever high strength, light weight ratios and inability to be changed are required.

The research group evolved a new chemical recycling technique for carbon fiber that uses mild acids as catalysts (in liquid ethanol) at a comparatively low temperature to decompose the thermosets. To decompose cured materials successfully, the researchers increased the temperature of the material so that the catalyst holding liquid can go into the combination with force and can decompose the complex form.