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It's Just String & Glue. This is a newsletter about composites, the strings, the glues, and the business.


Lots of Carbon Fiber in Winter Olympics Equipment
#composites, #carbonfiber, #sportsequipment, #winterolympics, #carboncomposites I have been watching the Olympic Games going on in Italy like most of the rest of us. Sunday a week ago was the men’s Luge competition and thankfully there weren’t any horrible accidents. That sport is not only exciting it is also nerve racking to watch. Eighty miles an hour on a little sled barely long enough to hold the slider, going around high banked turns where the smallest mistake could b
Feb 188 min read


Fireproof Carbon Composites and Using Composites to Reduce CO2 Emissions
#composites, #sustainability, #greenhousegasreduction, #fireproofcomposites, #fibers I saw a couple of interesting tidbits in Composites World this week that piqued my curiosity, so I thought I would dig in a little deeper and write about them and their potential impact on not only sustainability but also the composites business in general. DEECOM Recycled Fireproof Carbon Composite I’m going to start off with one that intrigued me because of a couple of things. First, what
Feb 47 min read


Natural Carbon Fiber Precursors – How About Thin Air?
#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins Yes, in fact, a company in Houston called Mars Materials, Inc. which is a public benefit corporation incorporated in Texas, teamed up with the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina and NC State University to take CO 2 captured from the atmosphere and ammonia/bio-based feedstocks and turn it into acrylonitrile. The Textile Innovation Center at NC State tested the Mars material and found
Jan 286 min read


A Few More Tidbits in Composites Sustainability News
#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I received my November Issue of the Composites World magazine (electronically of course) this week and as usual it had a couple of interesting developments in the world of composite materials sustainability, one of which is sort of fun – if you like water sports. So, I thought I would write about these and a couple of other things that I came across in my information feed about composites. A
Nov 12, 20255 min read


Collection of Composites Sustainability Tidbits from Last Two Weeks
#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins Since this is supposed to be a “newsletter” I thought I would collect some tidbits of news on the composites sustainability front that have come across my feed in the last couple of weeks. I did want to get a couple of state of the art posts done, so the last two weeks I haven’t been keeping everyone up with the latest news. And there has been some news to keep up with, especially in the rec
Nov 5, 20256 min read


Now For the State of the Art in Carbon Fiber Recycling
#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #carbonfiber, #thermolysis, #solvolysis Last week I went through the state of the art in wind turbine blade recycling, which could alternatively have been titled “state of the art in glass fiber recycling” because most of the wind turbine blades that have come to the end of their useful life or are nearing their demise are primarily made of glass fiber composites. In some of the larger blades, there is a carbon fiber spar cap that I
Oct 29, 20258 min read


Revisiting an ICCM Paper – Continuous Carbon Fiber Recycling at NCCUK
#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #recycling, #fibers, #resins I mentioned this work in my post just after the ICCM conference...
Oct 8, 20255 min read


Recycled Carbon Fiber Use in the Clean and Renewable Energy Business
#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #carbonfiber, #renewableenergy I saw an announcement in Composites World that was repeated in...
Sep 24, 20257 min read


Update on Microwave Processing to Make Carbon Fiber
#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #microwaves, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy I have written about this topic before, but...
Aug 19, 20256 min read


The International Conference on Composite Materials – And What’s Coming Soon
#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I gave my paper at the International Conference on...
Aug 13, 20257 min read


A New Entrant in the Recycled Carbon Fiber Scrap Business – Thermoplastic 3D Printing
#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #carbonfiber, #thermoplastics, #recycledfiber There seem to be more new entrants into the use...
Aug 5, 20257 min read


Is this the Answer? Fully Bio-Based Completely Recyclable Composites
#composites, #sustainability, #biocmoposites, #lactate, #plantfibers, #bioresins A really interesting article popped up in a feed that I...
Jul 29, 20258 min read


Composites Recycling in France Goes Full AI
#composites, #sustainability, #AI, #recycling, #carbonfiber I saw a very interesting news article this week about Fairmat, a French...
Jul 8, 20257 min read


Fully Bio-Based Carbon Fiber Almost Ready to Come Out of the Lab
#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #cellulose, #lignin, #plantbased Last week I focused on the up and coming composite resins...
Jun 10, 20256 min read


Some More Uses for Recycled Carbon Fiber – Flexible Solar Panels?
#composites, #sustainability, #recycledfiber, #carbonfiber, #fibers, #resins I saw a really cool article in one of my news feeds that I...
May 25, 20256 min read


An Update on Carbon Fiber Recycling – Continuous Fibers No Less
#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #recycledfiber, #carbonfiber I have talked about how difficult it is to recycle composites –...
Apr 28, 20257 min read

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