A New Kid on the Block and Some Other News in Recycled and Plant-Based Composites
- Ned Patton
- Jun 25
- 5 min read
This week is going to be another hodgepodge of news about companies getting started with recycling of composites, using natural fibers in their new vehicles and products, and using recycled materials married with composites to create a product that is sustainable and can be recycled at end of use.
I wanted to start with a company in the midst of being launched by someone I met and had a long conversation with at SAMPE in Indianapolis. I listed to a presentation about the formation of his company and what their plans are to recycle used wind turbine blades at an industrial scale into feedstocks for use in other products. This company based in Montreal, FibeCycle, was founded by a group headed up by the gentleman I met in Indianapolis, Andrew Csinger.
These folks use a similar process to what is being done by others, grinding up the blades into smaller pieces and using those pieces as feedstock. What is different about their approach is that they already have the technology worked out to be able to sort the coarse ground material into longer and shorter fibers and have different uses for each. One of their first products that is already on the market is a 3D printing filament made using recycled wind turbine blade glass fiber and resin mixed with enough thermoplastic that it can be 3D printed. This material is sustainable as well because when the part that is 3D printed reaches the end of its life, it can be melted back down and turned into new 3D printing filament and made into new parts.
The other thing that is unique about FibeCycle is that they plan to scale this endeavor up to the point where they can handle tons of material a day. If they are successful this will go a long way toward solving some of the mounting problems we have with used wind turbine blades. Only time will tell how successful they will be. I am going to stay on top of this one and provide updates as time goes along.
In other news, there was an article in Composites World last week about a Ukrainian robotics company, Lemki Robotics, that has made an off-road logistics robot. This thing is completely 3D printed and incorporates nearly 100% recycled materials, including composites, in its structure.
The body of this thing is made from recycled glass fiber reinforced polypropylene, and the wheels are made using recycled urethane with recycled carbon fiber reinforced nylon. The wheels are buoyant, so they act like paddle wheels when this thing goes in the water. And since it is light weight and has high sides it floats in the water. So it can go pretty much anywhere. And it has both LIDAR and full 360 degree cameras with a smart controller and a Starlink connection for communications with a ground station. The article didn’t talk about payload, but from the looks of it, it might be very useful for defense applications or even as a logistics platform for disaster recovery. This is the same company that makes the tiny 3D printed camper that they call Discovery. They are working with a German company iSCALE 3D for development of the composite material 3D printing process that they used which is most probably the same company they partnered with to develop their Discovery 3D printed tiny camper.
This camper is 3D printed with a fiberglass reinforced polypropylene sourced from recycled plastic water bottles. This thing is probably really fun for a couple with no kids, or for the couple that needs to get away from the kids and leave them with grandma.
In other news, more about natural or bio-based composites, it appears that Bcomp, the French flax fiber composites company, has inked a deal with BMW to supply it with flax fiber materials for both interior and exterior parts of BMWs to replace quite a bit of the carbon fiber materials in BMWs entire lineup.
This appears to be the first major automotive company to fully embrace natural fiber composites. Maybe they are going to try to compete with Volkswagen in this area because VW is starting to incorporate recycled plastics and natural fibers into their automotive interiors. They started with the ID Buzz and it looks like that is going to be their future.
Here in the US, Midwest Composites has teamed up with drone maker Terra Agri (Indonesia) to make biocomposite canopies for their agricultural drones. Midwest Composites uses empty fruit bunch palm pulp reinforced with woven jute and nonwoven kenaf fibers to make a rather robust canopy for agricultural use in Indonesia and Malaysia. The empty fruit bunch (EFB) palm pulp is a rich lignocellulose material which makes for a very strong and durable composite when reinforced with these plant-based fibers.
That’s about it for this week. As always, I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them. I will post this first on my website – www.nedpatton.com – and then on LinkedIn. And if anyone wants to provide comments to this, I welcome them with open arms. Comments, criticisms, etc. are all quite welcome. I really do want to engage in a conversation with all of you about composites because we can learn so much from each other as long as we share our own perspectives. And that is especially true of the companies and research institutions that I mention in these posts. The more we communicate the message the better we will be able to effect the changes in the industry that are needed.
My second book, which should be out in the fall, is a roadmap to a circular and sustainable business model for the industry which I hope that at least at some level the industry will follow. Only time will tell. Since my publisher and I have finally come to agreement about the title for my next book, our daughter has been kind enough to put together a draft of the cover of the book for them to use to come up with a final version. So, I’ve included the approved cover at the end of this post as promised. Let me know whether or not you like the cover. Hopefully people will like it enough and will be interested enough in composites sustainability that they will buy it. And of course I hope that they read it and get engaged. We need all the help we can get.
Last but not least, I still need to plug my first book, so here’s the plug. The book pretty much covers the watershed in composites, starting with a brief history of composites, then introducing the Periodic Table and why Carbon is such an important and interesting element. The book was published and made available last August and is available both on Amazon and from McFarland Books – my publisher. However, the best place to get one is to go to my website and buy one. I will send you a signed copy for the same price you would get charged on Amazon for an unsigned one, except that I have to charge for shipping. Anyway, here’s the link to get your signed copy: https://www.nedpatton.com/product-page/the-string-and-glue-of-our-world-signed-copy. And as usual, here are pictures of the covers of both books.
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