Recycling and Circularity of Aircraft Composites

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are used for aviation and other sectors with a wide range of thermoplastic and thermoset resin components. This generates a high variety of applications, but also leads to different and complex recycling streams. Globally, this generates about 62,000 t per year of end-of-life (EoL) CFRP and CFRP production waste. Due the ongoing landfill legislation and due to the increasing raw material and energy costs, recycling is becoming more mandatory. A variety of different primary and secondary recycling routes are therefore being investigated in the Clean Sky 2 programme.