Recovered carbon fibers from commercial aerospace composites using chemical treatment at atmospheric pressure.
Researcher:
Yijia Ma
Summary:
The increasing use of carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) composites has posed environmental problems because most end-of-life CFRPs are sent to landfills without treatment. Consequently, effective recycling methods for CFRPs are required to make this material sustainable, especially for thermoset composites in which the crosslinked polymer matrices cannot be easily separated from the fiber reinforcement.
The goal of this project is to develop a chemical recycling method that uses safe chemicals (solvents and catalysts) and scalable conditions (atmospheric pressure and moderate temperatures) to effectively decompose the thermoset matrix and separate the carbon fibers. Moreover, the selectively decomposed polymer components via catalysis also retain high values and can reused for new applications, thus closing the material loop.