Recycling of carbon fiber reinforced plastics: State of the Art and Challenges

With a wide range of adjustable properties, plastic materials continue to spread into more and more markets and rapidly penetrate even high performance applications with carbon fibre reinforced plasics (CFRP) as their top level commercial solution. In the past, there were two aspects responsible for the limitation of further growth of the market proportion of such composites, namely the production capabilities and the cost of CFRP-based structures. With high investments in technological improvements from various sides, several process routes have been (and still are) developed up to a commercial state, able to produce complex structures in an acceptable range of productivity. As reduction of manual layup and vice versa increase of automation have been a mayor focus point of the past innovations, the improvements in production as a snowball effect also had an impact on lowering the overall cost of the material. With these two main obstacles out of the way, there is nothing that could hold back the overwhelming triumph of carbon composites – or is there? The discussion about sustainability, environmental impact and climate change has entered a new level in the last few years, reaching all the way to civil disobedience and may provide the next big challenge for fibre reinforced plastics.