JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Composites for Sports, Health & Leisure - November 2020 - 48

APPLICATION watersports

Industrial-scale recycling
Epoxy thermosets are high-performance polymers with superior
mechanical strength, very good
chemical resistance and adhesion properties; they are thus
used for many diverse composite
applications. The volume of the
epoxy thermoset market is currently around 2.7 million MT per
year and is estimated to grow at a
CAGR of 5.5% for the next eight
years.
Unfortunately, dense three-dimensional crosslinking makes
epoxy thermosets conventionally
non-recyclable, posing a massive
challenge to the disposal of parts
or products at the end of their service life. According to the World
Economic Forum, total plastic
waste could reach 12 billion MT
by 2050, with oceans containing
more plastics than fish - clearly
plastic production volumes must
be reduced, and recycling needs
to increase. Existing thermal, mechanical and chemical recycling
technologies are often used to
prevent waste from entering landfill or a water body.
However, these technologies have
disadvantages and limitations including economic viability. The
innovation presented in this paper allows the recovery and recycling of thermoset composites,
unlike conventional thermoset
plastics which are non-recyclable.
Recycling uses a low-energy conditioning in an acetic acid solution for around 2-3 hours at 8090°C.
The process has been validated
for industrial-scale recycling and
reuse of thermoset composites
and Cobra demonstrated that
recyclable raw materials can be
used to replace existing materials
without complex adjustments to
equipment or processing methods. The recovered reinforce-

The Recyclamine Process

ments can be reused for making
new composite parts, rather than
needing to be reprocessed into
mats, chopped fibres or milled
fibres.
The resin component, which
is recovered as a thermoplastic
polymer, can be used by itself or
compounded with conventional
thermoplastics to make objects
for consumer or industrial applications.
From lab scale to pilot
and commercial scale
Aditya Birla Chemicals, who have
been a technical partner with the
inventors of the Recyclamine®
amine building blocks since
2016, fully acquired their partner
Connora Technology's business
and technology in mid-2019.
During the initial development
phase, the company worked on
developing processes and technology to transition from lab scale to
pilot and commercial scale.
Subsequently, they leveraged their

technology platform to develop
novel systems for composite applications and partnered with Cobra
to develop sustainable closed-loop
recycling of epoxy composites for
sports and leisure applications.
Massive potential in the
thermoset composite market
The innovation has massive market potential, not just in the field
of composites for sporting goods
but also in the wider thermoset
composite market.
The strengths that Aditya Birla
and Cobra bring to this manufacturing development relate to
their ability to reach industrial
scale with the materials and production technology.
Previous work in this field has
produced interesting components
but the industrial capacity for raw
material production via Aditya
Birla and the series production
lines at Cobra can now provide
recyclable thermoset parts for
true high-volume production. By

jec composites magazine / November 2020 / SPECIAL ISSUE Sports, Health & Leisure

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Composites for Sports, Health & Leisure - November 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Special Issue Composites for Sports, Health & Leisure - November 2020