Recovery and re-use of carbon fibre

An attempt was made to fine tune a recycling technique to allow recovering the carbon fiber from waste aeronautical parts. Three carbon-fiber recovery techniques were considered: a chemical resin-digestion process based on an analytical technique for calculating the percentage of carbon fiber in composite materials; a heat treatment involving pyrolysis in an inert atmosphere; and incineration, an energy-recovery process that results in the complete combustion of the composite. Results indicate that both the chemical and heat treatment techniques can be used to recycle epoxy-based thermoset composite materials.