I have been thinking about the challenges that all of the sectors of the composites industry are going to face as we transform this industry from a linear petroleum-based business model to a circular plant-based business model. It is going to happen because not only is the public aware of the issues, there is a building regulatory framework both in Europe and here in the US that is going to push this industry to become sustainable and carbon neutral.
Since this has come to mind recently, I thought this week I would focus on the challenges that the raw material suppliers face in this transition off of petroleum and on to deriving their base organic compounds from plants or plant by-products. This is arguably the biggest challenge that this industry faces. This is because, to oversimplify the situation, the remainder of the industry really just needs to source their process energy and heat from renewables, once they have the base chemistry that they need to make the fibers and resins. While I admit that this is an over-simplification, and while there are significant challenges still to be met in all of the sectors of this industry, it is still the most challenging, so I’m going to talk about this one first. We will get to some of the rest of the challenges in future posts.
There are a number of challenges that the fiber and resin producers face when making the transition to plant-based organics for their products. First and foremost is the fact that these materials are not available in large enough quantities yet for these companies to make the transition. Without the base organic chemicals in industrial quantities such as what is supplied regularly from the petroleum industry, the most that these companies can do is to integrate what is available into their product line.
Another hurdle is that currently, at least in the aerospace industry, the fibers and resins along with all of the raw materials to make these fibers and resins are required to be certified by both the FAA and the DoD for integration into aircraft. In fact, each version of each fiber and each resin is individually tested, fabricated into test panels to be taken to failure, and is required to pass a very rigorous set of tests before it can be qualified. While this is much less true of the automative and sporting goods industries, what these industries have relied upon is selecting materials from a list that is put out by the DoD called MIL-HDBK-17 – or military handbook 17. This handbook has not only the material properties of acceptable composites and their constituents like fiber and resin, it also has guidance on construction, acceptable design standards, etc. This is essentially the bible for the use of composites in the DoD, and it has been accepted by the composite materials community as a general reference for all things composites. If your material is not in MIL-HDBK-17 it does not get used – at least in the major industries that use composites. The singular exception to this is the sporting goods industry, however even that industry requires a rigorous set of tests for any new fiber or resin system to be used. This is commonly done on a company by company and case by case business. But is does get done and for a good reason, Wilson does not want their carbon fiber tennis racket to break in the middle of a match at the Olympic games. While this is a bit of an over-simplification again, you get my drift.
That being said, this handbook is actually live and is updated continually because the composite materials business is changing so rapidly. While that is a good thing for the industry, what this handbook requires to get a material accepted and listed in it is the same extensive set of tests that is required by the FAA and the DoD.
No plant-based fibers or resins or the raw materials to make fibers and resins have yet been certified to either the FAA or to MIL-HDBK-17.
Currently plant-based precursors for both fiber and resin are still mainly in the laboratory with a few notable exceptions. I have talked about the plant-based acrylonitrile that was developed by Southern Research and used by Trillium to make carbon fiber. This fiber is now being scaled up by Syensco (formerly Solvay) as a completely new product. It is most probably inevitable that Syensco will at some point in the not too distant future get this fiber into MIL-HDBK-17 as a plant-based alternative to standard petroleum-based carbon fiber. That process is going to take some time.
On the resin front, there are several new companies that have sprung up in the last few years that make plant-based epoxies. And there are all manner of different ways to get to epoxies using different plant oils and base organics, including lignin. None of these, however ends up being a bisphenol-A based epoxy. A major part of the reason this is so is because bisphenol-A does not exist in nature. In addition to that, it is somewhat toxic both to humans as well as most plants.
What that means is that these epoxies, while they have mechanical and chemical properties that make them potentially acceptable to the industry, will have to go through the same process to get certified for use on aircraft for the FAA and the DoD. In addition, they will have to go through the same sort of qualification that all other materials that are listed as approved for use for flight hardware in MIL-HDBK-17 have had to go through.
The bottom line in all of this is that the transition to plant-based composites and away from petroleum-based composites will take some time. It is also going to take political will and the willingness of companies to invest significant sums of money into completely changing their business model. There is already resistance in the industry, mostly here in the US, but some also in Europe. In Europe, however, the EU countries have all signed on to the European Green Deal which puts a target date out there for all companies in the materials business and in most manufacturing businesses to be carbon neutral by something like 2050. So, since just getting these materials certified and also getting supply chains in place so that companies can get off of the use of petroleum makes this date fairly ambitious.
Finally, like I said at the start of this post, this is probably the most challenging part of the composites business to get moved off of petroleum and on to plant-based precursors. But, there are challenges, albeit not as difficult as the one presented here, but still quite challenging, in most of the rest of the aspects of this business. But I will leave that for a future post – maybe next week. I do want to go over all of this over the next couple of months in these posts so that everyone has a good grasp of the challenges and/or opportunities that this transition represents.
That’s about it for this week. I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them. As usual I will post this first on my website – www.nedpatton.com – as well as on LinkedIn. And if anyone wants to provide comments to this, I welcome them with open arms. Comments, criticisms, etc. are all quite welcome. I really do want to engage in a conversation with all of you about composites because we can learn so much from each other as long as we share our own perspectives.
I also wanted to remind everyone again that I am working on my second book. This one is about what I have been writing in these newsletters for the last 6 months or so – sustainability of composites and a path to the future that does not include using fossil fuels for either the raw materials or the process energy to make composites. Stay tuned to this space and I will let everyone know about my progress as I write this one. I’m a bit over halfway into it at this point and I know what I want to write. And now that life is settling down a little bit I have time to devote to just writing.
Finally, I still need to plug my first book, so here’s the plug. The book pretty much covers the watershed in composites, starting with a brief history of composites, then introducing the Periodic Table and why Carbon is such an important and interesting element. The book was published and made available last August, and is available both on Amazon and from McFarland Books – my publisher. However, the best place to get one is to go to my website and buy one. I will send you a signed copy for the same price you would get charged on Amazon, except that I charge $8 shipping. Anyway, here’s the link to get your signed copy: https://www.nedpatton.com/product-page/the-string-and-glue-of-our-world-signed-copy. And as usual, here’s a picture of the book.
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