Carbon Fiber recyclable?

[Tarnag40k]

As some of you might know (if my avatar& sig doesn't give it away) I'm into cars, anyways about 3 weeks ago a rock I'd say about the size of an american footbal from a gravel truck a was follow feel off, bounce off the road, hit my carbon fiber hood and somehow missed the rest of my car, seeing as how it's almost impossible to fix something that is woven such as carbon fiber I ended up replacing the hood, so now I have this large cracked hood in my room, knowing how expensive the material is.

Anyways nobody on my automotive forums knows anything about this but is but recyclable? I've heard of people being able to freeze and pry the resin off the weaves and lay down new resin over it and being able to do the same to the frame, but what about the actual carbon-fiber itself? It'd seem to be such a waste.

[unstattedCommoner]

Yes in theory, in so far as there is a company in England (http://www.recycledcarbonfibre.com/home.php) which does it.

[Jimp]

As far as I know it's a specialist job but I don't know of any myself.
Also, welcome to the wonderful world of cars! Say goodbye to your bank balance :smallbiggrin: What are you driving?:smallsmile:

[BugFix]

First off, just to assuage a peeve of mine: you overpaid for that tricked out hood. It should be fiberglass. Hoods aren't structural, they only need to support themselves. And the only benefit to using carbon fiber is the higher strength to weight ratio, which means you can use fewer layers. But again, this is most likely a single ply application: you can't use fewer than one layer, and thus can't save any resin weight. I'd be very surprised if the weight savings on a 1 m^2 panel vs. a sparse-woven cheap glass composite was more than an ounce or two.

That said, and notwithstanding the link unstattedCommoner found, I'd be pretty dubious about any recycling effort. The carbon, again, is structural (in non-cosmetic applications -- hoods don't count). Any damage or fraying due to the recycling process is going to directly impact its performance. Stress damage to fiber composites is poorly understood to begin with. Throwing a complicated multi-stage recycling process into the mix is only going to hurt things. Poorly constrained error tolerances means that you need to use more carbon to be safe, which again pushes the carbon fiber performance closer to that of the much-cheaper glass cloth.

Short version: this is a situation where "reduce" (or "reuse", if you can find something to do with your cracked hood) is a better option than "recycle". Or, as it's a hobby and you want the expensive part anyway, just accept that it has an impact and try to reduce your impact elsewhere.

[anazopyreo]

Wouldn't it still be possible to recycle it even if the end product isn't carbon fiber?

[Don Julio Anejo]

Any reason you don't want to use a "regular joe" metal hood? Chances are it's much cheaper AND easier to recycle..

[Tarnag40k]

Any reason you don't want to use a "regular joe" metal hood? Chances are it's much cheaper AND easier to recycle..

Because the OEM hood unpainted and unprimed is actually $100 more? Not to mention I have my old OEM hood that was crumpled when a co-worker backed his tuck over my car. 56lbs versus a 14lb hood?

And as far as the fiberglass goes, yeah I've seen fiberglass during winter not fun. Also Bugfix do you know how much I paid? And since I'm using a non vented hood, I really don't feel like using fiberglass and risking it breaking on me whenever it gets cold, which has happened to people I know even with properly placed hood pins. Also nobody outside of carbonworks in korea makes a fiberglass hood that's even worth looking at for my car. Considering how my speeds usually get above 80mph highway (my new hood has a carbon fiber frame) I wouldn't trust fibeglass the weather is to rough on it.

[BugFix]

And as far as the fiberglass goes, yeah I've seen fiberglass during winter not fun. [...] I really don't feel like using fiberglass and risking it breaking on me whenever it gets cold

Fiberglass doesn't break in the cold. I suppose the resin might, but certainly that's nothing specific to glass -- carbon fiber composites use the same resins. The fibers themselves are too thin to see any significant stress from bending of the resin substrate, which of course is the whole point of using them as cloth in the composite instead of a rigid block of the same material (and in any case, the carbon fibers are actually more rigid and thus more likely to fail structurally). In any case, there are thousands of airplanes out there flying with fiberglass engine cowlings and nacelles that are subject to far higher thermal stresses than any car in the snow will ever see. If you have a friend with a broken hood, it's probably because it was a misdesigned part. I can assure you it's not the glass.

And FWIW: my point was general, not specific to your situation. The parts you are buying are made of carbon fiber because the customers want to be able to say "Z0mg d00dz! I+s C4rb0N Fi6r3!" to their friends, and not because the material offers any benefits above the other, much cheaper composite cloths available. Non-structural body panels are just not an appropriate application for expensive composites.