Abstract
Composite materials made of glass and carbon fibres have revolutionised many industries. Demand for composites is experiencing rapid growth and global demand is expected to double. As demand for composites grows it is clear that waste management will become an important issue for businesses. Technically composite materials evoke difficult recycling challenges due to the heterogeneity of their composition. As current waste management practices in composites are dominated by landfilling, governments and businesses themselves foresee that this will need to change in the future. The recycling of composites will play a vital role in the future especially for the aerospace, automotive, construction and marine sectors. These industries will require different recycling options for their products based on compliance with current legislation, the business model as well as cost effectiveness. In order to be able to evaluate waste management strategies for composites, a review of recycling technologies has been conducted based on technology readiness levels and waste management hierarchy. This paper analyses 56 research projects to identify growing trends in composite recycling technologies with pyrolysis, solvolysis and mechanical grinding as the most prominent technologies. These recycling technologies attained high scores on the waste management hierarchy (either recycling or reuse applications) suggesting potential development as future viable alternatives to composite landfilling. The research concluded that recycling as a waste management strategy is most popular exploration area. It was found mechanical grinding to be most mature for glass fibre applications while pyrolysis has been most mature in the context of carbon fibre. The paper also highlights the need to understand the use of reclaimed material as important assessment element of recycling efforts. This paper contributes to the widening and systematising knowledge on maturity and understanding composites recycling technologies.
Highlights
Composite materials have revolutionised many industries, predominately aerospace, marine, construction and automotive industries (Sims and Bishop, 2001; Jiang, et al, 2007; Bai, 2010)
‘Recycling’ strategies are represented by waste processing technologies: solvolysis, microwave heating, pyrolysis, mechanical grinding ‘Reuse’ strategies focus either on options where change to the manufacturing processes or supply chain is required; these are rather bespoke to individual production lines
The recycling of composites will play a vital role in the future for sectors like aerospace, automotive, construction and marine
Summary
Composite materials have revolutionised many industries, predominately aerospace, marine, construction and automotive industries (Sims and Bishop, 2001; Jiang, et al, 2007; Bai, 2010). J. Rybicka et al / Journal of Cleaner Production 112 (2016) 1001e1012 waste if it goes to landfill, including a climate change levy. The incineration of scrap is restricted due to directive 2000/76/EC that prevents air, water and soil pollution by limiting emission levels. This has significant cost and operational implication for the future waste management of the composites in many industries (Witik, 2013), but currently the most affected will be aerospace, construction, marine and automotive industries (Sims and Bishop, 2001; Jiang et al, 2007; Bai, 2010). The Lifting Off report (BIS, 2013) acknowledges that substantial growth within the aerospace sector over the 20 years will involve step-change increases in aerospace production volumes
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