Closing the fibre-reinforced composites loop: recycling materials for recycled components

Lightweight fibre-reinforced composites are a key technology for a sustainable society and have been largely employed in several industrial sectors: sport equipment, wind energy, automotive, aerospace and more.

Their recent widespread adoption, however, was not matched by a similar advancement of technologies for their recycling and disposal.

In the next three decades, between two and three million tons of composites waste are estimated to be produced globally.

Landfilling or incinerating such an amount of material, as it is done today, would significantly compromise the fight against climate change. Future scientists and engineers will thus need to efficiently dispose of such waste in a sustainable way.

FibReLoop thus aims to train 14 innovative researchers that: 1) have a multi-disciplinary background expertise on all circular economic aspects of fibre-reinforced composites; 2) are able to identify, develop and commercialise key technologies and research opportunities for the sustainable development of composite materials; 3) can communicate efficiently with industrial partners, academics, media, policy makers and the general audience.

FibReLoop researchers will be supported by a holistic training programme, provided by the 6 academic and 8 industrial partners of the project.

The researchers will be involved in all the phases of the recycling process of composite parts: i) the analysis and development of recycling techniques, ii) the material characterisation and modelling of the recycled composites and the reclaimed constituents, iii) the design of components made of recycled composites, iv) their industrial adoption and finally v) the life cycle assessment of recycling processes and recycled materials.

Overall, FibReLoop scientific advancement will allow to fully contextualise fibre-reinforced composites in a circular economic framework, boosting EU’s innovation capabilities while also allowing it to achieve the ambitious goals of the European Green Deal.