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 you see in the pic above are parts for a lithium-ion battery that are non-conductive and are also fireproof.  That isn’t the interesting thing about these parts.  What intrigued me is that these were made by a company that has developed a process for recycling these components after the end of their life and retaining 100% of the fibers and matrix materials that the parts originally had.  And they have demonstrated reuse in the same application of the recycled materials.  This is the first instance of a completely circular use of carbon fiber composites that I have seen, and it represents a huge step forward for the industry. 

The company that developed this process is Longworth Engineering Ltd. in Blackburn, U.K. (formerly B&M Longworth).  Their process involves the use of high temperature steam and pressure to completely strip the resin off of the fiber while retaining all of the resin that was originally bound up in the composite.  They have apparently been working on this process for a decade or more and have finally gotten the process to where it produces recycled fiber and resin that are identical in physical and mechanical properties to virgin fiber and a resin product that can be turned right back with apparently minimal processing into neat resin again. 

Longworth, one of the go-to suppliers for metal cleaning systems, originally developed this process that they call DEECOM (for decompression) when they realized that their customers were beginning to have difficulty disposing of the petroleum based solvents that they used in their systems for cleaning polymers off of metallic surfaces.  They came up with this bright idea of using high temperature and pressure steam to try to soften the polymers a bit so that they could use less solvent to clean them.  What they discovered was that their new steam based process actually cleaned off all of the polymers from the metals and left the metals completely intact.  Essentially what the process does is use high pressure and high temperature to de-polymerize the hardened plastics.  Since the temperature is so high and since this is water based, the resulting monomers (resin or uncured plastics) essentially dissolved in the high temperature steam and can be separated rather easily from the resulting water once it condenses. 

Since then, they have branched out into the recycling of the fireproof carbon fiber composite parts of the lithium ion batteries increasingly being used in electric vehicles.  These batteries are required to use fireproof materials in their construction because of the nature of lithium ion batteries.  These batteries, as we all know, if improperly handled or improperly designed can go in to thermal runaway and burn up.  And one of these fires is very nearly impossible to put out.  There are lots of images and videos of this on the internet (LinkedIn especially) which has caused the safety regulators both in Europe and in the US to require fireproof materials for these batteries.

The company that developed and demonstrated this entirely recyclable material using the DEECOM process is CFP Composites in Dudley, U.K.  They partnered with Longworth to demonstrate this at scale using Longworth’s DEECOM process and CFP Composites large scale manufacturing processes.  This manufacturing process was already in place at CFP making fireproof composite parts for blast shields, lithium ion battery parts for the EV industry, fireproof mats, fire protection laminates, and fireproof 3D molded structural parts for a number of industries.

This is quite an accomplishment and bodes well for the future of the composites industry.  It is, I believe, the first truly 100% circular use of carbon fiber composites demonstrated at industrial scale.

FLASHCOMP Testbed (CW 1/26/2026)

In other sustainability news, there was a paper published in the journal by that title (Sustainability – MDPI Open Access - https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability) about an EU funded project called FLASHCOMP that aims to help the composites industry transition to a zero defect and zero waste industry.  Right now, of course, there is a tremendous amount of waste in the composites industry primarily because it evolved from the combination of the textile industry and the petrochemical/plastics industry which both have a lot of waste.  And the product forms available to make aerospace grade composites are sold in sheet form much like the way you buy yards of fabric at your local fabric store. 

The authors of this paper argue that waste in the composites industry is not an inevitable environmental problem but is rooted in manufacturing and processing inefficiencies.  What is different about their approach is that they are not looking at sustainability and waste creation in the current siloed structure of the composites industry where there are raw material suppliers, manufacturers of ready to use products like carbon fiber / epoxy prepregs, manufacturers of parts for an industry such as aerospace or automotive, and designers in companies that use composite parts or assemblies in their products.  They are using a holistic approach to tracking sustainability all the way through the process of manufacturing and use of composite materials.  They have therefore created a different framework for assessing sustainability than how that is reported today in each of the many sectors of the industry. 

What they are apparently working on to start with is the resin infusion process to make parts that is becoming more prevalent in the high rate manufacturing side of this industry.  Their premise is that by reducing inefficiencies in the infusion process itself will lead to zero defect, net shape parts that have no waste associated with them.  This is a fairly tall order since most resin infusion parts are made with a little of what is called “flash” in the forging industry or a bit of extra material at the edges that is cut off to make the part once it is cured and the vacuum bag comes off.  This has been the traditional process for making aerospace parts and even automotive door panels and the like because the edges of the panels must be held to such tight tolerances.

One insight that the article in Composites World brought up about this paper is that it is important to link environmental indicators directly to the operational performance of both the manufacturing process and the end use of the manufactured part.  Engineers already have metrics that are used to monitor part and process performance during the manufacture of any part, so tying these metrics to sustainability and taking a holistic view of the entire process is a fairly new idea.  And the paper also stresses that this isn’t just a set it up and forget it sort of thing, it is intended to be a continuously evolving and improving process. 

Once can only hope that their efforts and this paper will get noticed and that processes like this will be examined and adopted in the composites industry.  It should, because what this relates to is cost to manufacture and cost of scrap when the manufacturing process goes awry, which it often does, especially in this industry that is evolving and changing on a daily basis.  Adopting a mindset that is holistic and is intended to reduce and eventually eliminate inefficiencies could lead the industry not only to a more sustainable future, but a future where a composite solution is cost competitive with traditional metallic approaches. 

So, that’s it for this week’s post.  As always, I hope everyone that reads these posts enjoys them as much as I enjoy writing them.  And I hope people who are interested find something they can use in their lives or at least some ideas that they might be able to put into practice.  At least I hope that these make people think a bit about sustainability and some of the major issues looming before us.  And if you have any of the normal orthopedic issues that come with aging if you have had an active lifestyle, stay tuned to this newsletter and I will be giving you some more info in future posts. 

I will post this first on my updated 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 will be soon, 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 actually heard from my publisher last week and the book is out of editing and should be sent over to the production side of the house this week.  The editor had only a very few questions for me which were easy to answer, something of a change from my first experience writing a book.  Whether that is because I did a better job of writing it or they decided to give it an even lighter hand in editing is unclear.  But I’ll take it because this means that it is moving through their process, and I should see page proofs to approve shortly. 

Anyway, this time it is under a bit different category – Science and Technology.  Maybe it will get noticed – as always that is just a crap shoot. 

Just so that everyone is reminded, I’ve included the approved cover at the end of this post.  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.  “The String and Glue of our World” 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 August of 2023 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.