Weak acid + ethanol + low temperature Washington university to achieve carbon fiber composite materials

　According to foreign media reports, the Washington state university (WSU) Mechanical and Materials Engineering college (School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering), a professor of Jinwen Zhang and his team developed the first carbon fiber plastic recycling method, its USES weak acid under the condition of low temperature of carbon fiber composite Materials for chemical decomposition, so that the future of recycling.

Along with the development of the automotive lightweighting, lightweight, safety, comfort, excellent performance and reliability of the Carbon fiber composite materials (also translated as "Carbon fiber reinforced plastics, Carbon fiber reinforced plastics) used is showed a trend of rising, however, this kind of material is not without flaws, it is often difficult to break down, or recycle material, make people begin to pay close attention to gradually to the recycling of the material. This material is different from thermoplastics (thermoplastics), which cannot be easily cured, decomposed and reduced to the original raw materials.

The commonly used treatment in the industry has many disadvantages

To realize the recycling of carbon fiber composites, in most cases, the researchers will use mechanical equipment to grind the materials, or use ultra high temperature to make it happen decomposition, or is in the harsh chemical conditions, the reduction of expensive carbon fiber material.

However, after using the above process, carbon fiber is usually damaged, and the remaining chemicals are often corrosive and can be harmful to the human body. When it's worse, it's hard to get rid of the waste. In addition, if adopting the processing mode of the above on the material of the resin base material (matrix resin material) damage, produce all kinds of chemicals, due to the difficult to remove hurriedly, and increased the degree of difficulty of processing waste.

Various weak acids + liquid ethanol + low temperature operation

Jinwen professor Zhang and his team to solve the problem of the recycling of carbon fiber composite materials, they developed and adopted a new chemical recycling method: they will be a variety of weak acid (mild acids) as catalyst, add it to liquid ethanol, biochemical reaction, the issuance of the condition of low temperature makes the thermosetting materials (thermosets) is broken. Remarkably, they used a combination of chemicals in their experiments.

To improve the decomposition rate of curing material, the researchers raised the temperature of the material, to seep into the liquid containing catalyst in composite material, which realize the chemical decomposition of carbon fiber composite materials. Zhang USES the ethanol liquid to inflate the volume of the resin and then decomposes the carbon-nitrogen bond with zinc chloride. This step is crucial.

He said: "the research and development of the recycling method is the key to efficient catalytic system (catalytic system), enable it to infiltrate the cured resin, and then make the curing of the resin chemical bonds are broken down."

The team also developed an efficient way to preserve carbon fiber and resins so that they can be reused later. At present, the team has patented its technology and is committed to promoting the commercialization of the technology.