Composites Recycling in France Goes Full AI
- Ned Patton
- Jul 8
- 7 min read
I saw a very interesting news article this week about Fairmat, a French company that I have written about previously. These are the folks that are building a recycling facility for uncured carbon fiber prepreg right next to the Hexcel manufacturing plant in Salt Lake. They are taking the cut scrap that is uncured and removing the resin from it and turning the resulting carbon fiber into usable products that they are selling back into the composites manufacturing industry.
The amazing thing is that, with help (read as funding) from the French Government they are going full AI in their entire business model. And, the interesting thing about this is that this is only one of a number of French companies that are taking their businesses into what is euphemistically called “deep tech” which means AI or large language models. The fact that a large composites recycling company has gone full AI is, from my perspective, the future of this technology.
The pic above is not from the article about Fairmat, but it is about a collaboration between Westlake Epoxy and Alpha Recyclage (Toulouse, France) to scale up the Alpha Recyclage carbon fiber recycling capacity. It does, however, in a sense portray at least part of the problem with the composites recycling industry. That is that there are usually mixed materials in the stuff that needs to be recycled, and each material has its own either temperatures to recycle if thermal means are used or solvents if chemical means are used. Handling all of that material, knowing how much of what you have and being able to recycle it efficiently and effectively requires an enormous amount of data handling. And that means that it is a very good application of AI to handle all of that, since AI really is just a very smart database management tool that can handle enormous amounts of data and make independent decisions about what to do with the stuff based on what it is and how much of it you have.
The French have apparently realized this about most of their industries and is beginning to insert itself as a serious hub for the application of deep tech to all of their industries. They think, and rightly so, that this will give them a competitive edge against some of the larger countries that are also developing their own AI models and infrastructure, like the US and China. Having a technical leadership position in AI would put France ahead of most of the rest of the world.
What Fairmat is doing is blending robotics, AI, machine learning, and autonomy to build a completely autonomous and intelligent recycling system that can quickly make decisions about how to sort materials, what recycling process parameters to use on each of the sorted materials and apply them automatically to result in consistently high quality recycled materials. They are focusing initially on carbon fiber, but that is not to say that the same cannot be applied to the higher tonnage fiberglass composites in wind turbine blades that are piling up all over the world.
Fairmat is not the only French company that is adopting a fully intelligent, AI based approach to the advanced materials business. There is a nice graphic in the CW article that talks about Fairmat that shows the entire French composite startup ecosystem. All of the companies listed in this graphic are startups that are using the French deep tech funding initiative to move the entire industry into the new world of AI.
I have written about a few of these companies in previous posts, but this is a pretty expansive list and it demonstrates a real commitment to AI in the advanced materials startup ecosphere in France.
Now on to a couple of other topics, since I am on the subject of recycling of composites and sustainability in the industry. The image at the beginning of this post is from another CW article, this time about a collaboration between a Houston based petrochemical company, Westlake Corp. and Alpha Recyclage Composites. Westlake is going to support this French composites recycling company in scaling up its capacity to recycle all manner of carbon fiber composites, from uncured scrap to end of life pieces and parts. Alpha Recyclage has a patented steam pyrolysis process apparently that leaves the carbon fiber nearly in pristine condition so the recycled fiber has pretty high value and can be sold in to markets looking for a consistent, high quality carbon fiber at a lower cost than brand new. They are trying to go from their current batch process to 1000 metric tons of carbon fiber waste per year in 2027. Westlake is getting high quality carbon fiber out of this deal that pairs well apparently with their sustainable EpoVibe grade of epoxies made using sustainable and renewable raw materials. So this is another collaboration that appears to be spending the money and assigning the right resources to make their products sustainable.
On the thermoplastic resin composite front, there is a company that is actually scaling up the technology to recycle thermoplastic matrix composite materials. While everyone talks a good game about this and lots of pundits keep saying that we should move to thermoplastic matrix composites because they are inherently recyclable, very few companies to date have bet the farm as it were on scaling up the technology to actually do this. This is a rather difficult endeavor, because if you think thermosets are hard to recycle, there are actually only two different thermoset plastics that make up the bulk of thermoset matrix composites – polyester and epoxy. Thermoplastics, on the other hand, are a completely different story. There are more different formulations of thermoplastics than one person can name and every one of them has a different melt temperature, different processing requirements, different chemistry, and differing compatibilities with other thermoplastics.
So, the fact that this Netherlands based company, Spiral RTC, has taken this problem on head first is laudable. They say that their business model comprises three steps: 1) collecting the waste, 2) converting it into useful materials, and 3) selling it back into the composites marketplace. While the first and last are easy at least to understand if not to actually accomplish, number 2 is challenging. First they are going to have to sort the material into different thermoplastic reinforcements. Once that is done they have to remelt it and turn it into a pelletized form so that it can be used to make new thermoplastic matrix composite parts. And they have to do this without ruining the mechanical properties of the virgin material. Quite the undertaking and I applaud them for taking this on. Someone has to do it. Interesting that it is the Dutch who seem to be leading in a lot of these new technologies for recycling and reusing advanced material waste.
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.
I also wanted to mention that I will be giving a talk and chairing a session at the ICCM conference (International Conference on Composite Materials) at the Baltimore Convention Center on August 8 if anyone plans on being there. It is being hosted by my alma mater, the University of Delaware to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Composite Materials. That’s where I did my doctoral work so I know several of the people who are going to be at the conference. Should be fun.
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.
Very interesting article as usual. I am always facinated with the recycling industry and what they are doing to make a difference in the products.