Recycling of composite materials Tweet
Composite materials are used in a wide range of applications such as automotive, aerospace and renewableenergy industries. But they have not been properly recycled, due to their inherent nature ofheterogeneity, in particular for the thermoset-based polymer composites. The current and future wastemanagement and environmental legislations require all engineering materials to be properly recoveredand recycled, from end-of-life (EOL) products such as automobiles, wind turbines and aircrafts.
Recycling will ultimately lead to resource and energy saving. Various technologies, mostly focusing on reinforcementfibres and yet to be commercialized, have been developed: mechanical recycling, thermal recycling,and chemical recycling. However, lack of adequate markets, high recycling cost, and lower quality of therecyclates are the major commercialization barriers.
To promote composites recycling, extensive R&Defforts are still needed on development of ground-breaking better recyclable composites and much moreefficient separation technologies. It is believed that through the joint efforts from design, manufacturing,and end-of-life management, new separation and recycling technologies for the composite materialsrecycling will be available and more easily recyclable composite materials will be developed in the future.