Recycling and End-of-Life Management of Glass Fibres
topic
Glass fibre composite recycling routes include mechanical grinding producing glass fibre-polymer powder for filler applications with significant strength reduction, thermal pyrolysis recovering glass fibre with 50 to 80 percent property retention, and chemical solvolysis using supercritical water or acidic solvents recovering near-virgin fibres at higher cost; wind turbine blade recycling at scale is a major sustainability challenge driving circular economy research.
Role
Addresses the growing end-of-life challenge from the billions of tonnes of glass fibre composite materials reaching end of service life in wind energy, marine, automotive, and construction applications, where the thermoset polymer matrix that makes composites strong also makes them difficult to recycle while the glass fibre fraction represents recoverable raw material value.