Joseph Heil

Study and Analysis of Carbon Fiber Recycling Joseph Heil

To meet increasing performance demands on materials used for aerospace applications, carbon fiber composites have been increasingly turned to. With the increasing use of carbon fiber composites, also known as carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs), substantial waste is generating during manufacture as well as at the end of the service life of the composite structure. In order to reclaim the valuable carbon fiber in CFRPs and to avoid landfilling CFRPs carbon fiber recycling techniques have been developed to recover carbon fiber from CFRPs. In this work the systematic evaluation of recycled carbon fiber (RCF) from multiple material sources and multiple recycling processes has been conducted in three phases. Each phase asses the state of the art in carbon fiber recycling. Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, and Single Filament Tensile Testing has been used to characterize morphological, surface chemistry, and mechanical properties of recycled carbon fibers.