Reclaim, Reuse and Reap the Rewards

Vartega was highlighted in an article by Mary Lou Jay published in the May - June 2020 Issue of Composites Manufacturing Magazine. The complete article is below. Originally posted on 05/06/20: http://compositesmanufacturingmagazine.com/2020/05/reclaim-reuse-and-reap-the-rewards/

As the use of composite materials continues to grow in many different markets, so does the industry’s search for better ways to recycle its products and reclaim the valuable materials that are locked inside them.

Consumer demand is one driver of these recycling efforts. People want to deal with companies that have shown a commitment to sustainable operations. “I think the social pressure is increasing to drive behavioral changes in the industry,” says Andrew Maxey, CEO of Vartega. “The consumer is coming to expect it. We are incentivized through public perception to make some changes here.”

There are also sound economic reasons for supporting recycling. Companies can save money by incorporating reclaimed materials into their applications and releasing the production energy stored within them. “The reality is if we’re going to put a lot of energy into producing materials in the first place, there’s no reason not to reclaim or recover the energy the best we can,” says Maxey.

Virgin Properties at Half Price

Colorado-based Vartega has developed a patented process that recovers the carbon fiber from high-grade, pre-impregnated scrap. The thermoset material that is being recycled – uncured prepreg and dry fiber fabrics – comes primarily from the aerospace industry, which has a scrap rate of about 30%.

The typical prepreg contains about 65% carbon fiber, and Vartega is able to recover it all. Its low-temperature dissolution process employs several different process chemistries to wash away the resins in the scraps and remove the original sizing or chemical binder on the carbon fibers. Almost all of the chemicals used in the dissolution process can be recovered and reused again.

The reclaimed carbon fiber has the same properties as the virgin fiber. “Because we are not degrading or damaging the fiber surface at all, we maintain the mechanical properties, including the strength and stiffness of the carbon fiber,” Maxey says. The fiber has high electrical conductivity and minimal thermal expansion as well.

The stringy, recycled carbon fiber that comes out of the process is chopped and consolidated with a compatible binder for thermoplastic compounding. Vartega is concentrating primarily on the thermoplastic market at present, but has produced carbon fiber for non-woven thermosets as well.

Vartega sells its recycled carbon fiber products at about half the cost of those made with virgin material. Right now, the biggest demand is for polypropylene and polyamide carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastics, according to Maxey. Customers that use this reclaimed carbon fiber include consumer product companies, sporting goods manufacturers and the automotive industry.

“This technology helps solve a problem for the waste generators, but it also helps create low-cost, recycled carbon fiber downstream, which unlocks opportunities that couldn’t exist otherwise, like high-volume lightweighting for the automotive industry,” Maxey says.

Over the last 18 months, Vartega has been working with IACMI – The Composites Institute on projects that could close the loop on automotive carbon fiber scrap and eventually make high-volume production possible. The goal is to address the challenges of creating consistent recycled carbon fiber thermoplastics for use in vehicle lightweighting. Other project partners include Ford, Dow, Michelman, Techmer PM, Michigan State University, Colorado School of Mines, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Tennessee and the University of Dayton Research Group.

“Carbon fiber recycling technology has matured significantly over the past decade, but several challenges still exist in producing materials at automotive scale,” says Maxey. “We recognized that a holistic approach needed to be taken to create supply chain solutions for recycled carbon fiber.” He will share some of the data from this project at ACMA’s virtual Composites Recycling Conference in May.

Processing Close to the Source

Vartega has two business models for its recycling technology. The first is the scenario in which Vartega processes the manufacturing scrap at its facility in Colorado and sells the recycled carbon fiber. The second model is onsite or local recycling, described here.

Vartega has designed its carbon fiber recycling equipment to fit within a modular unit that companies can lease and install at their production sites. “What’s unique about this is that we can deploy the technology close to the source of the manufacturing scrap,” explains Maxey. The manufacturer can run the process, or Vartega will come in and run it for them.

All of the post-processing – converting the reclaimed carbon fiber into saleable products – will remain in house at Vartega for now since many customers don’t have an immediate reuse application. “We’re able to close the gap in the supply chain and connect a captive supply to an unmet demand downstream,” says Maxey.

The markets Vartega is targeting for these modular units are composites manufacturers serving the aerospace industry and their carbon fiber suppliers, which send hundreds of tons of scrap material to landfills each year. If manufacturers don’t want to set up their own processing centers, Maxey says Vartega could establish regional recycling centers to handle scrap from many different companies. Although this wouldn’t be as efficient as having a unit onsite, companies could reduce their transportation costs because they wouldn’t have to send their waste long distances to Vartega’s Colorado location.

Over time, Vartega plans to expand the recycled products that it offers. It is already working with partners to develop the technology to recover resins and sell them, and it may expand into thermoplastics recycling at some point as well.

Solving a Big Problem

One very large recycling challenge, and one that’s been garnering a lot of press attention recently, is end-of-life composite blades from wind turbines. Media outlets, including NPR, BBC and Bloomberg Green, have carried stories about the very limited options that currently exist for recycling these giant composite components. A Bloomberg article published online on March 9 notes that in the U.S. alone about 8,000 of these blades will be removed from service annually for the next four years, and almost all of them are destined for landfills.

Companies in the U.S. and Europe are trying out a variety of wind blade recycling solutions. According to an article in Energy News Network, Global Fiberglass Solutions is slicing them into pellets that can be used for flooring and other construction materials, while Bloomberg reports that the Danish company Miljorskam is grinding them up into highway noise barriers.

For more than two years, ACMA has been working with IACMI, CHZ Technologies, Continental Structural Plastics, A. Schulman and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to develop a technology that recycles wind blades and other thermoset composites. The goal is not only to reclaim the glass and carbon fibers, but also to recover the energy used in their production.

The team began with the testing of several different composites using CHZ’s Thermolyzer™ technology at an undisclosed location. The facility is designed to recycle a wide variety of materials, including composites, railroad ties, utility poles and plastics. It can handle between six to 10 tons of material a day.

The Thermolyzer uses continuous, oxygen-free, pyrolysis to break down the composite materials into glass fibers and/or carbon fibers, as well as a clean gas that can be used for powering the process. The equipment also converts any toxic materials in the composite into inert salts.

During the project’s first phase, the Thermolyzer processed composite materials from four different sources: a tractor panel that contained both glass and carbon fibers; a GFRP sheet molding compound (SMC) automotive panel; a wind turbine blade cap made with carbon fiber; and wind blades that contained glass fiber, balsa wood and other materials.

“Each of these materials had different resins and different fibers that had some unique characteristics. They had to be processed in a way that optimized the recovered fiber properties,” says Chuck Ludwig, managing director of CHZ Technologies. That required adjusting the temperatures and dwell times. For composites that contained glass fiber, the team also modified the process to reduce the strains and stresses on the glass fibers so that they would retain as much of their modulus and rigidity as possible.

The team sent some of the reclaimed fibers back to the University of Kentucky and its other industry partners for cleaning, testing and processing into composite materials.

During the project’s second phase, which began in 2019, the focus has been on recycling wind blades and optimizing the process to produce a consistent glass fiber on the back end. “We ended up making a modification to the equipment and put in a port configuration and a new output design to ensure a minimal amount of physical stress on the fiber,” says Ludwig.

Another change was improving the consistency of the material that was fed into the Thermolyzer. The wind blades, which started out at 157 feet long and weighing about 15,000 pounds, were first cut into sections. After going through a mobile field shredder at Shred-Tech in Canada, the blade remnants measured a few inches wide and about a foot long. Approximately 1,000 pounds of those large pieces were further reduced with another shredding. The goal was to minimize the amount of very large pieces in the mix and make the remnants more uniform. These pieces were then sent to Germany for recycling in the Thermolyzer.

The composite remnants were processed in two batches. “[During Phase A] we swept through from the low end to the high end of the temperature range, and we found a temperature range that was the processing sweet spot,” Ludwig says. Phase B confirmed that finding.

“You want the temperature and the processing conditions set so that as you feed the material in on a continuous process, you’re getting the very best flow. You’re getting an optimization of what you believe will be the right kind of fiber properties,” he says. “By having a lower temperature and a really consistent optimal throughput, we’re likely to have the very best processing conditions that you could get for the wind turbine blades.”

CHZ believes that it could run the machine continually every day with this material and replicate the test results. “Our goal is to optimize the properties on the back end and make them consistent so they can be reused in the same type of application. You don’t want to find that the recycled material works really well one day and the next day it doesn’t,” Ludwig says.

The team was able to regain just over 200 pounds of fibers during this process. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has retained some of the fiber and is sending the rest to end users, who will test the material’s properties, add a binder and then try it out in different composite applications. Initial results should be available this summer.

Taking the Next Steps

CHZ Technologies plans to bring its Thermolyzer technology to the United States within the next two years. The company is working with ORNL on a lab-size (2.5 to 4-ton) Thermolyzer that will be optimized for composites. “They have lots of different materials that that they want to work with and test,” says Ludwig.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been watching these experiments closely. Violent hurricanes over the last few years have left about 800,000 boats damaged or destroyed, and there are very few places to dispose of them. Since most have composite hulls and interior cabins, the Thermolyzer process might offer a solution. “The fact that the boats have some metal and wood doesn’t matter; we could end up processing that and recover the glass or carbon fiber that’s used and keep it out of the landfills,” says Ludwig.

CHZ is getting ready to supply a Thermolyzer to a plant in Youngstown, Ohio, as well. “We have a relationship with Youngstown State University, which has a renewable recycling curriculum,” says Ludwig. “We would like to put in an R&D center to do the testing near the university. It could be a place where we can train young men and women who are going into the recycling industry.”

The power industry has expressed interest, too. Utilities not only have end-of-life wind blades that they need to dispose of, but also electric poles that contain toxic chemicals. The Thermolyzer could reduce the poles to a renewable natural gas and biochar. With further research, the gas could be converted into other products, such as green ammonia or liquid fuels. There would be enough gas produced not only to power the recycling process, but also to help generate additional electricity. (Recycling composites takes more energy, so there’s no excess gas produced. For other materials, however, the Thermolyzer requires about 20% of the produced gas to run, leaving the remaining 80% for other uses.)

Ludwig says that as power companies convert their coal plants to natural gas, they could build a Thermolyzer on the plant property. The utilities could use it to keep their wind blades out of landfills and to create useful chemicals and gas from the poles, railroad ties, tires and plastics (even those from the ocean, which can’t normally be recycled). They’d be able to create an income stream by bringing in other materials, including composites, to be recycled as well.

It’s important to both the power and the composite industries to find a solution to the problem of these wind blades. “The wind industry was kind of a glamour industry on the renewable side of energy. Now it is showing a very ugly part [with the end-of-life wind blades],” Ludwig says. With technologies like the Thermolyzer, these industries could erase that negative image and replace it with a positive one as creators of non-polluting energy and reclaimers of valuable materials.

Work on these and other recycling/reuse technologies will continue to grow because the composites industry understands that it’s the right thing to do, Maxey says. “We are still a fairly small industry, but we recognize the need and the opportunity for collaboration,” he says. “Folks really want to solve these problems, and they’re willing to do it together. To me, that makes all the difference because we’re going to get there that much faster.”