Page 44 - Plastics News July 2023

Huntsman and V-Carbon Technologies join forces to transform carbon fibre
recycling

They retain their mechanical perfor-
mance, making them suitable for a va-
riety of high performance, high-value
applications.V-Carbon’s technology is
based on a patented chemolysis pro-
cess enabling the carbon fibre and the
chemical resins obtained at the end
of the recycling process to be repur-
posed.
Huntsman brings its extensive ex-
perience in developing and manu-
facturing chemical products to the
partnership. Its role is to ‘analyse the
resin recyclate that results from their
chemolysis process’, said Klaus Rit-
ter, Technology Intelligence Manager
for Huntsman’s Advanced Materials
division.“By studying the output of
the recycling process, we can iden-
tify new uses for the material, which
helps solve the current end-of-life is-
hile the use of carbon fibre als, experts in Huntsman’s Advanced sue with high-performance compos-
Wcomposites, with their high Materials division approached several ite materials.”
strength and low weight, combined recycling companies to propose col-
with their resistance to temperature laboration efforts targeting the recov- Huntsman and V-Carbon have agreed
extremes, corrosion and wear, has ery or recycling of both the fibre and to work together to develop and op-
become ubiquitous particularly in ve- the resin and chemical components. timise the recovery of the chemicals
hicles of all kinds, from commercial They found the partner they needed present in the chemolysis recyclate -
aircraft to racing bikes - at the end of in V-Carbon Technologies, a UK- something which has previously not
life, they nonetheless become a prob- based advanced materials technology been possible. “Working with Hunts-
lem. company man allows us to provide even more
value to our customers and to society
Carbon fibre materials have, to date, V-Carbon has developed the first fully as a whole,” said Damian J. Cessario,
mainly been disposed of in landfills or integrated carbon fibre circular econ- founder and CEO of V-Carbon Tech-
they have been incinerated, as few omy for use in the aerospace, automo- nologies.
recycling options are available. While tive, wind energy, and industrial sec-
several companies are currently ex- tors. The company has developed an “We were already successful in pro-
ploring industrial and economically vi- integrated process chain to produce ducing carbon fibre yarn from our
able solutions for recycling the carbon advanced materials systems using process. Our collaboration with
fibre, very few, if any, are looking at high-performance second life carbon Huntsman opens up additional oppor-
recycling the entire composite. fibres. These recovered carbon fibre tunities for circularity in manufactur-
ing by identifying sustainable solutions
In an effort to find a more sustainable material systems are easily integrated for the entire carbon fibre composite
end-of-life solution for these materi- into existing manufacturing platforms. material.”

44 PLASTICS NEWS July 2023