Disposal of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers – Problems During Recycling and Impacts on Waste Incineration

Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRPs) are becoming increasingly more ubiquitous in our daily lives. CFRPs are composite materials, consisting of carbon fibers with high mechanical capabilities and a formative polymer matrix. The production process of carbon fibers is complex and energy intensive, thus making CFRPs more expensive than comparable metal materials. The advantage of CFRPs lies in their weight; metal materials of the same properties weight up to five times as much. This makes CFRPs especially valuable in areas, where weight and cost directly correlate, but high mechanical properties are still essential.

Carbon fibers are synthesized on basis of organic polymer structures. Depending on thesource material, the fibers contain different amounts of carbon and therefore different mechanical and electrical properties. The first carbon fibers were based on cellulose and produced via pyrolysis. Different carbon sources, like pitch or specifically synthesized polymers are also possible. Due to the high achievable purity and thereby best possible mechanical and electrical properties, the majority of carbon fibers today are based on polyacrylonitrile (PAN). It should be noted, however, that polyacrylonitrile is asubstance made up purely of acrylonitrile monomers (C 3 H 3 N), but inherently brings unavoidable impurities. During the production of polyacrylonitrile, co-monomers, such as methyl acrylate are added to improve the solubility in the solvent, while the fibers stability is improved via stabilizers like itaconic acid.

Autor(en)

Marco Limburg, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Peter Quicker

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Publikation

Waste Management, Volume 6 (September 2016)

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