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Despite its contribution to tackling climate change by lightweight design, growing CFRP production also results in a global waste generation of 62 kt/a. Accordingly, the energy-intensive production process of carbon fibers (CF) necessitates sustainable recycling solutions.
Herein we will give an overview of current recycling processes, discuss their limitations and present a novel approach for safe treatment of CF unsuitable for material recovery . Our project CF Pyro examines feedstock recycling in pyrometallurgical processes, focusing on reactivity of CF, process stability and prevention of hazardous WHO fiber release. Besides fundamental experimental breakthroughs, their broader impact on circular economy will be presented.
As one of the most energy and carbon consuming industries, steelmakers have an intrinsic interest in the development of technologies, reducing their carbon footprint as well as their carbon input. Besides generating new feedstocks from biomass or waste polymers, the valorization of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) waste streams seems to be extremely promising based on the high carbon content of carbon fibers (CF), chars from CFRP and even unprocessed CFRP waste of >92%, 98% and 79%, respectively. Although, reduction of environmental impact from those high-performance materials was achieved by the development of smart recycling solutions, the continuous truncation by mechanical treatment of CF over multiple cycles, analogous to paper fibers, and the large global CFRP waste stream of 62 kt/a demand for a sustainable management of end-of-life (EOL) CFRP. Recently it was demonstrated that CF can be used safely as reductant in pyrometallurgical processes in a downhole electric furnace without significant WHO fiber emission. Therefore we anticipate a huge potential of CF based materials as sustainable reductant for steelmaking in an electric arc furnace (EAF). To facilitate the applicability of EOL CFRP in steelmaking, we investigated the interaction between CF based materials and liquid metal phases, appearing during the process, on different scales. Particularly, we examined the reactivity, wettability and dissolution behavior of CF and CFRP concerning liquid slag and steel. The presented results indicate that understanding the impact of the microstructure of CF on their behavior is crucial for their application in EAF steelmaking without risking potential hazards by WHO fiber emission. Besides the detailed elucidation of structure reactivity relationships of CF, the broader impact on circular economy will be presented.