An analysis of end-of-life terminology in the carbon fiber reinforced plastic industry

Abstract

While many studies and reviews into the practices conducted by industry and academia to recycle and remanufacture carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) exist, to date no investigation exists which regards the correctness of the use of terms recycling and remanufacturing. As such, this paper seeks to analyse the CFRP reuse industry's attempt to recycle and remanufacture manufacturing waste CFRP and end of life (EOL) CFRP with an emphasis on the terminology used to describe these practices. Firstly, this paper presents a justification of the importance of using EOL terminology correctly; outlining the benefits and problems associated with using the correct and incorrect terminology. This paper finds that in the case of CFRP remanufacturing, terminology is being applied incorrectly and in the case of CFRP recycling, particular care should be taken when applying the term recycled to CFRP or stating that CFRP has been recycled. Further, this paper proposes new terminology (in keeping with EU directives) which could be adopted by industry and academia working in this area. This paper also finds that in the case of remanufacture, CFRP is incapable of being remanufactured. Council 2012), the end of life vehicles (ELV) directive (European Parliament and Council 2000a), the landfill directive (European Parliament and Council 1999), the incineration of waste directive (European Parliament and Council 2000b), the waste shipment regulation (European Parliament and Council 2006) and the waste framework (WF) (European Parliament and Council 2008). Alongside increasing regulations the demand for CFRP is also increasing, Jahn and Witten (2013) found that global market is forecast to grow 300% between 2010 and 2020. With carbon fiber an expensive product to produce, costing up to £10,000 per ton (Marsh 2009), and although considered a complex waste type, the economic and environmental benefits (

Accounting for the environmental benefits of remanufactured products: Method and application

“…Several definitions of “reuse” are provided in legislation (e.g. EU, 2002, EU, 2008), standards (ISO, 2002, BSI, 2009) and scientific articles (King et al., 2006, Paterson et al., 2016).…”

Fatigue remaining life estimation for remanufacturing truck crane Jib structure based on random load spectrum

“…Aiming at the damaged or aging truck crane, the carbon fiber reinforced remanufacturing technology is selected to repair the high strength steel jib structure. The strengthening method of truck crane jib structure is composed of five parts, including surface treatment, fiber placement, resin ratio, low pressure infusion and resin curing.…”

Incorporating remanufacturing into the end-of-life vehicles directive: current presence and the waste problem

“…Remanufacturing is both established terminology and an established process, but is on occasion used ambiguously. Consider [28], who identified literature which fails to separate remanufacturing from refurbishing and recondition or [16], who found that remanufacturing in the aerospace industry is sometimes referred to as rebuilding.…”

“…Given that recycle, reuse and remanufacturing are understood as separate processes within literature [17,21,23,[26][27][28][29][30] and noting that literature's opinion or viewpoint is formed by studying operations conducted within industry, it is important to remain consistent with existing litearture. However, it has thus far been shown that remanufacturing has potentially a presence in recycle and reuse, which are both recovery operations of the ELV directive.…”