NREL Publishes Method for Recycling All Components in Carbon Fiber Composites - CleanTechnica

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed a novel, scalable, and cost-effective method to recycle all components of carbon fiber composites (CFCs), materials widely used in high-value products like aircraft, bicycles, and automobiles. CFCs consist of carbon fibers embedded in epoxy-amine resins, which are strong, lightweight, and expensive, but difficult to recycle due to the chemically interlocked and complex nature of the resin. Traditional recycling methods have been limited by the inability to dissolve or break down these resins without degrading the valuable fibers or wasting the resin’s chemical components. NREL’s breakthrough involves using hot acetic acid—essentially vinegar—to cleave the key bonds in the epoxy resins, solubilizing the polymer networks while preserving the chemical building blocks for reuse. This method was optimized to handle diverse resin formulations from various industries and was shown to recover carbon fibers without compromising their strength. In a demonstration, recycled fibers extracted from a scrap mountain-bike frame were used to