A research team at University of Limerick (UL) has developed a new method of producing carbon fibre while drastically reducing its energy footprint.
The project, which the researchers describe as “groundbreaking”, may benefit sectors such as boatbuilding, aerospace, wind energy, construction, and transportation, which use the lightweight high-cost material.
The “CARBOWAVE” project, as it is called, uses an innovative plasma and microwave heating method to make carbon fibre.
This replaces conventional heating processes and significantly reduces energy consumption by as much as 70% while maintaining the materials performance, the UL team says.
The reduction in the energy required to produce the material will make the process greener and less expensive, it says.
The project, coordinated by UL’s Prof Maurice N Collins and Dr Anne Beaucamp McLoughlin and funded by the European Commission, is “set to transform the energy intensive carbon fibre industry by deploying cutting-edge alternative heating technologies”, UL states.
First results of the research have been published in the Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials Journal.
The process involves a more efficient conversion of polyacrylonitrile (PAN), a key component in carbon fibre production, which needs a vast amount of energy to be converted into carbon fibres and is a strategic material vital for Europe’s future energy security.
The CARBOWAVE team says it will use “susceptor-induced microwave heating utilising self-assembled nanostructures technology”
This was initially developed by researchers at UL and the University of Valencia to convert PAN into carbon fibre - allowing it to be heated quicker and making the production process more efficient.
During the research, the UL team discovered that carbon fibre can be produced in an inexpensive domestic microwave and it can exhibit mechanical performance equivalent to that produced using conventional heating.
“Europe’s reliance on energy-intensive processes has long been a barrier to achieving sustainability. CARBOWAVE addresses this challenge and is an exciting project which offers the potential to produce more sustainable and cheaper carbon fibre,”Prof Collins, principal investigator on the project and professor of materials science in UL’s school of engineering, explained.
“The long-term implications are enormous as it could allow the deployment of carbon fibre in all sorts of applications where high strength and stiffness is needed from construction, transportation, hydrogen storage to wind energy and beyond,”he said.
Co-principal investigator Dr Anne Beaucamp McLoughlin, assistant professor in civil engineering at UL, explained that the project “aims to revolutionise the carbon fibre industry by significantly reducing the energy consumption and the cost of the carbon conversion process without losing their mechanical properties.
Current carbon fibre production, which is highly energy-intensive, relies heavily on electricity and natural gas.
The “CARBOWAVE” project’s solutions aim to reduce this energy use by over 70% while maintaining material performance.
Europe’s advanced carbon materials market, which dominates 37% of the global market, will directly benefit from this groundbreaking initiative, the UL team says.
The project unites leading research institutions and industry partners across Europe.
The UL research team worked in partnership with the Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung in Germany, the University of Valencia, Spain, Fraunhofer IFAM in Germany, Microwave Technologies Consulting SAS in France, Muegge GmbH in Germany, Centro Ricerche Fiat in Italy, Juno Composite Ltd in Ireland, and Eirecomposites Ltd, also Ireland.
