Biocomposites on Airplanes – Coming Soon to Your Flight

#composites, #sustainability, #biocomposites, #plantbased, #fibers, #resins

You heard me right, both of the major transport aircraft manufacturers are looking in to plant-based composite materials primarily to save weight in aircraft interiors along with making their products more sustainable. 

When I first saw this, I thought it was just more promotional stuff, but as I looked into it some more, I found that Airbus is actually spending money developing material product forms using plant fibers for use in their aircraft interiors for panels, overhead bin doors, cargo compartments, and a whole host of secondary structures where currently the parts are either metal or glass fiber composites. 

There is an article in Aerospace Manufacturing and Design - https://www.aerospacemanufacturinganddesign.com/news/bio-composites-could-transform-aircraft-design/ - that describes all of this and the fact that Airbus is seriously looking into it.  And Airbus has a press release their web site that talks about the use of biocomposites in their products - https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/stories/2024-06-developing-bio-based-composites-that-are-fit-to-fly. 

This news release has a pic of the helicopter I wrote about a month or so ago where they built a proof of concept nose panel using bio-derived carbon fiber and flew it on one of their helicopters.  They don’t really disclose how they got their acrylonitrile for making the fiber, just that it was derived from CO2 captured from the air.  Of course that is what plants do all day, so I guess that’s why they call it bioderived.  Maybe they develop a chemical process much like what chlorophyll does in plants – who knows.  At least this stuff wasn’t made using petroleum.

In more news from the EU, there is an ongoing EU-funded project called ECO-COMPASS focused on bio-derived and recycled composite materials that are appropriate for use in aircraft manufacturing.  And, unlike the US, the EU is not afraid to collaborate with the Chinese.  So industrial partners like Airbus and Comac are working both with researchers in the EU and in China to identify appropriate source streams for these materials to be used in future aircraft builds.  This will not only make the aircraft lighter and burn less fuel, it will also make them less expensive to build so they can compete with the likes of Boeing.

Fortunately, Boeing isn’t that far behind the Europeans.  Boeing is looking into the use of flax fibers for cabin interior walls as a replacement for the current glass fiber to save at least 1/3 of the weight of all of the interior paneling in their aircraft.  They are also looking into the development of plant-based resins to use for their interiors as well.  Sugarcane waste and lignin are both being investigated again for mostly use in aircraft interiors where the intent is to marry flax fiber with plant-based resins and create completely sustainable aircraft interiors. 

It appears that both of these companies are not only actively pursuing the use of plant-based fibers and resins, they are actually creating things that they can use and developing little test panels to see how well they will stand up to the abuse that commercial aircraft have to suffer.  Airplane passengers and flight attendants aren’t the most gentle on aircraft interiors.  As in, that drink cart is heavy and it can run into most anything if the plane hits a few bumps.  Interiors of modern transport aircraft have to be robust enough to handle that sort of thing.  There is even an article about this in a post from 3BL Media - https://www.3blmedia.com/news/boeing-plants-planes.

One more thing that both Boeing and Airbus are working on is the development of plant-based sustainable jet fuel.  They have been working on this for some time and have made a lot of progress.  Maybe some day we will be able to fly from California to DC without the guilt of burning up all of the fossil fuels that aircraft burn now, and we will be able to say that the airplane was made with sustainable and recyclable materials.  That’s going to be a while yet, but it looks like both Boeing and Airbus are working to make that happen.

Anyway, what originally prompted this post is an article from Composites World about the Pax Cabin Demonstrator that is being developed funded for the EU’s Clean Sky 2 Regional Aircraft Integrated Aircraft Demonstrator Platform. 

This demonstrator is a complete interior for a regional aircraft that is intended to demonstrate the use of sustainable biocomposite panels for major cabin interior components.  The pic above is from the June 2025 newsletter from Clean Aviation reporting on the successful completion of the demonstrator that simulates a real world full size biocomposite based regional aircraft passenger compartment.  From the pic it looks like they even integrated an aircraft head (bathroom for you land lubbers) into their demonstrator.  The seats actually pretty comfy to me.  Better than some 737 and A320 seats I’ve been in of late.  And these were on new airplanes that American has been buying over the last few years as they completely renew their fleet. 

But enough about my recent travels.  Bottom line here is that it appears that plant-based composites, once Boeing and Airbus start using them for interiors of their new aircraft, are going to be the future.  This is a very good thing and will be good for all of us since they are high tonnage users of composites, all of which today come from petroleum feed stocks.

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, and especially your experiences or thoughts about sustainability in the composites industry, 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.  I’ve included the approved cover at the end of this post as usual.  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.