International sports federations and sports equipment suppliers join forces to reuse carbon fibre components

International sports federations and sports equipment suppliers join forces

 to reuse carbon fibre components

The Carbon Fibre Recycling Demonstration Project, which was launched on Earth Day 22 April and focuses on the reuse of carbon fibre components from the sports equipment industry, is run by the World Sailing Trust in partnership with the International Federation of Sports Federations and supported by the International Olympic Committee, sports equipment manufacturers, Lineat Composites, the University of Bristol and the UK National Composites Centre.  

Fibres from broken or end-of-life carbon fibre components from sports equipment are recycled through the HiPerDif (High Performance Discontinuous Fibre) process developed by the University of Bristol, which rearranges the fibres into unidirectional prepreg tapes. These tapes will be supplied back to manufacturers within the consortium who will reuse the material in new sports equipment. Early results from the demonstration have shown that in some cases the new carbon fibre tapes produce better results than the original virgin fibres. 

The process is currently manual, with team members from Lineat Composites and researchers from the University of Bristol aligning the fibres manually. In the next phase of the project, a machine will enable Lineat to commercialise the process and align up to 80 billion fibres a day.  

Collaboration and alliances have been the key drivers of this project," said the people involved. We know that carbon fibre is often used extensively in sports, particularly in high-end performance sports. However, carbon fibre is used in much larger quantities in a number of other industries. This demonstration project was the first step and we are now keen to work with other sports and other industries to develop the next stage of this process."