Your presentation will focus on “Carbon fibre recycling for automotive lightweighting and advanced manufacturing” – please could you give us a quick sneak peak of what it will include?
This presentation will give the audience an introduction to Vartega’s novel recycling platform, which uses a chemistry approach to recovering carbon fibre from manufacturing waste. The presentation will also show commercial applications for recovered fibre, with a focus on value creation for the automotive sector.
What are the main challenges and opportunities for the carbon fibre and composites industry?
The design of composite materials for end-of-life management is a big opportunity for the carbon fibre and composites sector. Enormous amounts of energy and resources are expended to create these highly engineered materials. This value could be recovered in secondary (and even tertiary) manufacturing applications by using novel methods of recovery and supply chain management.
What does the carbon fibre market in Europe look like?
Manufacturing of advanced technologies like aerospace, automotive and additive manufacturing remain strongly rooted in Europe, these sectors continue to grow their use of composites. Couple this growth with Europe’s governance trend towards material lifecycle management, there is a strong economic case and market pull created for the repurposing of advancement materials (like carbon fibre) in Europe’s manufacturing sectors.
What do you see as the most significant shifts for carbon fibre and composites industry over the past 2 years?
One of the largest shifts observed in the carbon fibre sector is the rapid increase in its use in thermoplastics. The reinforcement of engineered thermoplastics with continuous and discontinuous carbon fibre, for the purpose of increasing strength and impact resistance, as well as overall lightweighting, is being explored and implemented more widely than ever before.
Why do you feel it’s important for people to attend GOCarbonFibre Conference 2019?
The applications of carbon fibre has expanded well beyond epoxy prepreg composites. GoCarbonFibre will enable companies and professionals to see case studies and novel applications of carbon fibre and find value in incorporating these composite formulations into their own manufacturing platforms.
