FibreLoop: Closing the Loop on Automotive Carbon Fibre Prepreg (UK/USA)

我们的愿景是将废弃碳纤维升级为高性能注塑颗粒。目前，纺织和加工过程中产生的废弃碳纤维几乎没有价值，因为几乎没有可行的方法来再利用这些材料，并利用纤维中仍然存在的重要特性。与此同时，碳纤维技术的潜在巨大捐助者，汽车工业，由于材料和模具技术的高成本，无法切实使用它。因此，我们将利用Vartega公司开发的回收技术，并将其与Coventive复合材料的新型颗粒制造技术相结合，为汽车应用生产具有吸引力成本/性能的大批量高性能材料。这将减少碳纤维废料废物流，低成本的再生碳纤维将用于汽车轻量化应用，以提高燃油经济性和减少排放。该项目的创新之处在于从树脂预浸料中提取碳纤维的化学过程，以及使用不连续纤维进行连续拉挤过程以制造颗粒。结合起来，这两项创新将导致利用废料制造高性能材料的罕见案例。

Our vision is to upcycle waste carbon fibre into high-performance injection moulding pellets.Currently, waste carbon fibre from weaving and processing has little value as there are few viable methods to re-use the materials and to utilise the still significant properties that remain in the fibres. At the same time a potentially huge benefactor of carbon fibre technology, the automotive industry, cannot viably use it due to the high cost of the material and the techniques used to mould it.Therefore we will utilise the reclamation techniques developed by Vartega Inc and combine it with the novel pellet manufacturing technique of Coventive Composites to produce a high volume, high-performance material with an attractive cost/performance profile for automotive applications.This will reduce the carbon fibre scrap waste stream and low-cost recycled carbon fibre will be utilized in vehicle light-weighting applications to improve fuel economy and reduce emissions.The innovation within this project is in the chemical process to extract the carbon fibres from resin prepregs and in the use of discontinuous fibres for a continuous pultrusion process to make pellets. Combined, these two innovations will result in a rare case of waste materials being utilised to create a high-performance material.