#composites, #sustainability, #vitrimer, #recyclableresin, #biocomposite, #bioresins I have been seeing articles in several different things that I read about a new class of polymers that is rather intriguing.  These polymers are called “vitrimers”.  Polymers that were processable by covalent bond exchange reactions (movable and reconfigurable covalent crosslinks) were developed initially in the 1990’s at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  James Economy’s gr

#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

#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

#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

#composites, #fiberglass, #structural_shapes, #construction, #composites_in_construction In this last post of 2025, I wanted to complete what I started last week and talk about fiberglass being used for structure in the construction industry.  Specifically I want to chat a bit about the evolution of what we have today as standard structural shapes as well as where these products are beginning to replace steel in construction. Fiberglass Roof Truss System Made Using Strongwell

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #end_of_life_composites, #thermolysis This week I’m going to make my newsletter just a bit shorter than what I did last week with all of the pictures of sailboats that use recycled or natural fibers for primary structure.  There are a couple of fairly newsworthy things that have happened just in the last few weeks that I want to focus on this week.  And I want to also let everyone know that I am going to take a couple of weeks off wri

#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

#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

#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

#composites, #recycling, #windenergy, #thermolysis, #solvolysis, #pyrolysis, #sustainability I have talked about this repeatedly by giving examples of companies and organizations, some largely funded and supported by governments, in previous posts.  This week, I thought I would provide a summary of what I see as the State of the Art in recycling wind turbine blades here in the US and in the EU and UK.  A lot has happened in the last couple of years, and some companies are not

#composites, #sustainability, #windenergy, #recycling, #renewableenergy A few weeks back I wrote a couple of articles, one about this project (REFRESH) and another about a company in Norway (Gjenkraft) that has gotten seed money to build a plant to recycle wind turbine blades using their pyrolysis process.  And of course the day after I wrote the article the REFRESH project posted the results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that they had performed by a consulting company in

#composites, #sustainability, #carbonfiber, #recycling, #fibers, #resins I mentioned this work in my post just after the ICCM conference...

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #recycledfiber, #recycledresin I have talked in this space about composites sustainability,...

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #carbonfiber, #renewableenergy I saw an announcement in Composites World that was repeated in...

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I read this week both in Composites World and in JEC...

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I saw articles this week in two of the industry...

#composites, #sustainability, #recycledplastic, #methanolysis, #resins I saw an interesting post this week from an unlikely source that...

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I gave my paper at the International Conference on...

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #carbonfiber, #thermoplastics, #recycledfiber There seem to be more new entrants into the use...

#composites, #sustainability, #biocmoposites, #lactate, #plantfibers, #bioresins A really interesting article popped up in a feed that I...