I have been watching the recycling space for a while now, and every week I see a news article about how another company has entered the composites recycling business. Initially, it was mainly a company in Switzerland – Composites Recycling – that had come up with a proprietary low temperature pyrolysis technique that started out recycling old fiberglass boats and was able to recover not only the glass fiber (fibre? – maybe not since I am writing this in the US), but also the resin in an oil form. I have written about them in the past.
Now there are a number of companies that have fairly recently announced that they are setting up composite scrap and end of life composite recycling facilities. These companies are still mostly in Europe, because this new trend is of driven by the fairly new European regulations about recycling all sorts of materials, especially composites.
I thought I would lead this off with this pic because it tells quite a bit of the story about recycling end of life composites. This pic is from Zajons in Germany, a composites recycling facility that uses recycled fiberglass to convert to alternative fuels for industry. They apparently do this through a solvolysis process. It is not clear where the glass goes, but presumably it can be used as a filler in concrete to replace some of the sand and gravel. The company that has the waste is Fiberline Composites, a wind turbine blade manufacturer that was looking for a means of responsibly disposing of their waste fiberglass. Apparently this relationship started in 2010 and is ongoing today. This relationship just got reported very recently even though these companies have been working together for over a decade.
Another company in Finland – Kuusakoski – is also starting up a fiberglass recycling center. Their process is similar to some of the original processes that were developed some time ago. What they do is to chop up end of life composites and send the chopped material to a cement plant in Finland. There all that is done with this material is to use it to make what is called “clinker” which is the precursor to the actual cement. In other words, the cement manufacturer is using the chopped up fiberglass for a heat source to make the clinker rather than being taken apart like what Zajons is doing. This is the most common means of recycling end of life fiberglass and it is not truly circular because it merely uses the original petroleum-based resin as a fuel rather than taking the composite apart and reusing both the glass fiber and the resin.
Composite Recycling in Switzerland of course is the big dog in Europe in this industry. I have written about them before, but this Swiss company has been recycling composites now for a number of years. And not only can they recycle fiberglass, the glass that is recovered is of high quality. And the resin becomes this light amber oil that they call “pyrolysis oil”. They call their process “thermolysis” rather than pyrolysis or solvolysis because it is a medium temperature process where they heat the fiberglass in an inert atmosphere in the absence of oxygen so that they don’t combust the resin. Other than that little is known about their proprietary process. One thing that this company does that actually makes them profitable is that they have ready markets for both the resulting glass fiber product and the pyrolysis oil because both are high quality and the oil has the right chemistry to be made back into usable resin fairly easily. And they have also been able to stuff their equipment into a mobile recycling unit that is the same dimensions as a 40’ ISO container. These are the shipping containers that you see on trucks going down the highway and stacked 10-15 high on container ships.
End of Life Boats ready to be chopped up and sent to Composite Recycling
There are several other companies that are also involved in this business. Syensqo (formerly Solvay) advertises a process where they reclaim and reuse 100% of their composite scrap in new products. How they accomplish this is not part of what they advertise, but this is a very reliable company, so we can take them at their word. They claim that they use heat to “separate the fiber from the resin” so we can probably safely assume that they are using a technique very similar to the thermolysis technique that Composite Recycling is using. And, since they are headquartered in Belgium, they aren’t that far from Switzerland, and they are in the EU, so it makes sense that they are adopting what is a fairly well proven composite scrap recycling technology.
Another company in France, Sonimat, is an ultrasonic equipment manufacturer that has extensive expertise in ultrasonic cutting and welding of all sorts of materials. For composites, they make ultrasonic cutting machines, thermoplastic composite welding machines, and even some laser and infrared welding machines. And they also make composite finishing machines that are tailored to a particular company’s processes and production lines. These machines are intended for high volume usage, so it is safe to assume that at least a few of the composites recyclers that cut up end of life composite parts use their equipment – especially those in Europe.
On the data traceability side of this, which is quite important to demonstrate compliance with current regulations in the EU is a company called Circularise. They have a supply chain visibility process that they call “Smart Questioning” that they claim is a much easier to use tool to achieve a complete chain of custody solution for a composite material manufacturer than having to go through the entire bill of materials for a particular piece of hardware and trace the chain of custody for everything, and while protecting data privacy and proprietary information.
Here in the U.S. there is a materials company in Albuquerque called Adherent Technologies that has a wet chemical recycling process that they call Jumbo. This process takes end of life carbon fiber composites and breaks them down in a liquid bath at 200 degrees C. This reclaims the carbon fiber at 99+% of its original properties, primarily because it is a clean low temperature process. Whether the liquified resin is reclaimed or not this company doesn’t say, but since it is a low temperature process, it is safe to assume that this liquid has value as well as the clean carbon fiber that results from their process. They claim that this process will work with any fiber but they just haven’t tried any others out yet. Since the temperature is limited to 200 C certainly glass fiber would not be affected. Nor would any of the organic fibers with the exception of the ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene fibers Spectra and Dyneema.
Recycled Carbon Fiber from Carbon Conversions
Another US company I have written about previously is Carbon Conversions in Lake City, South Carolina. They again have a more cradle to grave approach to this in that when they built the company they had already identified all of the pieces of the puzzle that would make them profitable. In other words, they had a process that they wanted to commercialize but understood that to accomplish this feat would take rounding up suppliers of appropriate carbon fiber composites and they needed most of all to identify and sign agreements with companies that would buy their carbon fiber end product. As you can see from the pic above, the carbon fiber product that they produce is very consistent in length and it looks to be very clean. So, this is another good news story in the composite recycling business. And they have been in business since 2008 so they aren’t going anywhere. A quick internet search on the company shows that they have been generating revenue since 2015, which is notable for a startup, especially in this business. They got an investment from Hexcel in 2016 that cemented a partnership to help Hexcel recycle their carbon fiber composite scrap. And they have very recently (2023) partnered with Vermont Sportscar to help them achieve their sustainability goals.
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 let everyone know that I have finished the first draft of 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. McFarland got back to me last week, and they decided that they will pick this one up as well. I am actually under contract with them for the book. My ingoing title is “Close the Circle, a Roadmap to Composite Materials Sustainability”. Now the slog to the finish while I prepare the manuscript along with all of the figures, etc. in the manner that McFarland needs to have it to produce the book. That will probably take me past the end of this year, so the book will most likely come out late next summer or early fall next year.
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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