Earlier this month I talked about flax fiber and new uses of it in the composites industry. And since that time, I dug a little deeper and found some more interesting applications as well as companies that have made a strong statement (meaning brought out products and aggressively marketed them) recently. This is about natural fibers as a path to sustainability in the composites industry, and also about how some natural fiber and plant-based resins have actually become more mainstream in a few industries. So, I thought I would expand a bit on a few subjects that I was not able to cover a couple weeks ago, and focus on the most prevalent natural fibers being used today in the composites industry, flax and hemp.
Let’s start with Flax. As I have written in the past, flax fiber not only has excellent mechanical and physical properties, it is also abundant in the free world. Hemp is also a very good fiber for this use, but since it’s production has only become legal recently in the US, there is less development going on in the use of hemp for reinforcement in composites than there is flax. I will touch on both in this post, but I did want to bring to everyone’s attention that sustainability in the composites industry has become mainstream, and it is starting with natural fibers and plant-based resins.
Bcomp front end to Porsche Cayman (Courtesy Composites World 10/1/2020)
As most of you may have guessed, I am a bit of a sports car enthusiast, so I just had to do it. The front end of this Porsche Cayman is made using a flax fiber composite material from a Swiss company called Bcomp that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. What you don’t see in this pic is the fact that Bcomp has developed a processing technology and a structural design method that provides a reinforcing rib structure on the side of this front end that you can’t see. And, since this material is structurally equivalent to a carbon fiber composite and weighs less, Bcomp has seen a rapid increase in use of their materials for race car bodies, as
well as mainstream automobile bodies, interior, and exterior panels mostly for European cars, as well as seats for Europe’s high speed rail system and for aircraft interiors. They have gotten their material certified to Europe’s fairly strict transportation safety rules as well as certification to several of the new sustainability standards internationally. They achieved ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification), IATF 16949 (Automotive part sustainability), ISO 14001 (ISO Environmental Management), the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution label, as well as ISO 9001.
In other European news, at JEC World in Paris in March of this year there was a booth set up that highlighted the Alliance for European Flax-Linen and Hemp. Bcomp was in the booth at what JEC called the “Natural Fiber Village”. They were joined there by Demgy Group, a company that has developed resin injection processes, thermoforming, and resin transfer molding processes for a fully plant based composite using an entirely plant derived resin system, using interestingly enough corn starch. And Demgy has forged an alliance with another French company – Terre de Lin – that processes flax directly from French farmers’ fields into flax fibers and woven fabric specifically for the burgeoning flax and hemp fiber composites industry in Europe. Together these two companies have developed an entirely plant based composite material that can be used as a direct replacement for fiberglass, and even for some carbon fiber composites. All of this from flax and corn.
In addition to these three companies, there were 7 other European companies that are in the flax and hemp fiber composite materials manufacturing business that were in the JEC Natural Fiber Village. These other companies have mostly focused their efforts on the development and production of flax and hemp fiber reinforcements for the composite materials business in Europe.
The recent activity in Europe is at least in part if not primarily the result of the 2022 EU Green Deal climate law I talked about a couple of weeks ago that went into effect requiring material producers to make their entire product lines carbon neutral by 2050, with an intermediate goal of reducing carbon emissions by 55% by 2030. The European efforts to meet this lofty goal has re-invigorated the R&D side of the European economy, and has provided a model for what has recently been done by the current Administration in Washington, DC.
But as long as we are talking about natural fiber composites being made into products in Europe, it might be a good idea to start talking about hemp fiber, since it has always been legal to grow in Europe, and has only again become a legal crop in the US in 2021. For this reason, we are a bit behind the Europeans, primarily because of the 1970’s “war on drugs” that banned the growing of hemp here in the US. But now that hemp is a legal crop in the US, there are a few companies here that are springing up that are starting to develop composites using hemp fiber.
There are, however, already several companies in Western Europe that grow hemp primarily for the fiber that it produces. There is even a European Confederation of Flax&Hemp – CELC in the original French. CELC’s mission is to bring manufacturers of products in Europe to the table to develop products using these two fibers. They have even developed a traceability brand EUROPEAN FLAX® to provide some fiber source regulation and consistency to the European flax industry.
To that end, in addition to the flax fiber for composites industry in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands where flax is primarily grown, there is a company in Lithuania, Natural Fiber UAB, that has focused almost entirely on hemp fiber for use in textiles and composites. They have recently spent more than 8 million Euro to build a modern hemp fiber processing plant. And since Lithuania is one of the biggest growers of hemp in Europe, this company has grown to be the largest manufacturer of hemp fiber for textiles and composites in the Baltic states (formerly part of the USSR). And since this company is in the location where the hemp is grown, they are able to manage the entire supply chain, from the hemp farmers’ fields all the way through to finished product. This provides them with traceability for all of their products. And while they are mostly focused on the textile and fashion industries, they are beginning to also expand their product line in to reinforcements for composites.
Another company, EcoTechnilin in France, also has a hemp fiber product that goes along with their main flax fiber textile products. Their hemp offering is a light weight random fiber mat that can be used in the place of fiberglass mat for applications like the marine industry, automotive and mass transit, sporting goods, and some consumer products that require lighter weight and lower cost than fiberglass.
Needless to say, there is a lot going on in the natural fiber composites world – especially in Europe. The US is in the throes of catching up, as I alluded to a couple of weeks ago, but since these plants (flax and hemp) have been grown in Europe since agriculture began in ancient times, the Europeans are ahead of us. Hopefully the new Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act will spur enough growth in sustainable materials in the US that we can catch up with the Europeans.
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 about seven chapters 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.
Kommentare