Carbon fiber technology has completely reshaped sports. It's helped athletes shatter once-unthinkable barriers, like the sub-two-hour marathon, and has revolutionized sports as wide-ranging as golf and tennis to surfing and skateboarding.
All the innovation, though, has come with a major cost. Recycling the ever-growing quantity of composite materials poses a huge challenge. That's where a team of scientists has come in with a promising solution: thermochemical recycling. This kind of recycling not only reuses discarded equipment but also retains much of its coveted stiffness and strength.
The Conversation shared an article written by two University of Sydney engineers who spearheaded the study, published in Materials Today Sustainability.
The scientists revealed that in the UK, a staggering 90% of composite material goes to landfills with a mere 2% getting reused to create carbon fiber equipment. It's no small number, with 7,000 tons of sporting equipment being discarded annually, representing 9% of overall composite waste.
The materials provide an even greater challenge for recycling due to the resins and polymers they are coated with for durability purposes.
Composite production also requires considerable resources, so finding a cost-effective way to recycle the material will be central to making sports equipment more sustainable. The team had previously done a cost-benefit of different methods before delving deeper into thermochemical recycling.
It proved up to the task, preserving 94% of the original carbon fiber's stiffness and 90% of its strength. The team used broken bikes and experimented with chemicals and different heat levels before landing at 425 degrees Fahrenheit. With the output, the scientists say the material could be used for sporting applications where marginally lower strength and stiffness are adequate. Alternatively, it could be used in 3D printing of different bike components or even in concrete.
The recycling solution for carbon fiber products in sports joins efforts from around the globe to solve some of the bigger challenges of discarded materials. Plastics are a frequent source of focus, as microplastics that can leak and end up in the oceans and our bodies are an alarming concern. Additionally, the more items that go into the trash, the more they contribute to the methane-producing landfills that warm the planet.
There have been very inventive ways to reuse highly specialized equipment like high-tech road bikes. A company, for instance, turned parts from a decommissioned wind turbine nacelle into a tiny home. A USC team used a waste-gobbling fungus to take on carbon fiber used to manufacture car panels and light rail vehicles.
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The upfront cost 💰 As for what's next, the researchers wrote, "We believe we can improve this process further so it uses still less energy."
While they concede it's unlikely athletes would ever go back to the inferior equipment of the past, they hope their research can help pave a path to salvage something useful out of the new wave of composite tech that has changed the game.
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