Recycling fibre-reinforced composite parts
Uncured carbon fibre recycling by Bulk Moulding Compound (BMC). Another route to valorise the fresh carbon prepreg scrap from aeronautical field has been stablished by Gaiker in MC4. In this case the scrap is used to develop bulk moulding compound (BMC), an intermediate product relying on short fibre, for production of new composite for transport applications. This new approach permits valorise a wide range of fresh prepreg scrap without any dimensional restrictions. This scrap is ground to reduce the fibre length and manufacture a BMC material mixing with new virgin resin formulation. An appropriate virgin resin formulation should be defined based on properties of scrap to ensure the compatibility between scrap and virgin material. The BMC produced is transformed to final composite part by a moulding process where temperature, pressure and time should be stablished to ensure the polymerization of material as well as correct geometry qualities and tolerances. Regarding the properties of this new composite, the initial studies reveal that the mechanical performance of the composite produced with new BMC is equivalent to commercial BMC based on virgin raw materials, with more than 250 MPa of flexural strength and more than 80 MPa of tensile strength.
Asueta, Asier. “Recycling fibre-reinforced composite parts.” Open Access Government (2023): n. pag.