The FY2017 Carbon Fiber Conference was held on schedule and the relevant companies participated in the year-end summary. Toray, ELG, Boeing and other companies gathered together to talk about the growth and challenges of the 2017 carbon fiber industry and forecast the growth of the 2018 market.
What has been achieved in the carbon fiber industry in the past year? What major breakthroughs will the carbon fiber market in 2018? From the beginning of the conference to the end, it has been working hard to improve application technology and expand carbon fiber applications. Slow down, will be done on the carbon fiber market growth forecast this year, and informed of several of the latest technological achievements.
Carbon fiber industry growth and challenges
Mark Voss, engineering group manager at GM, delivered a speech at the conference on the development of new automotive applications of carbon fiber, systematically elaborating on the challenges that will be faced in this direction.Voss mainly develops advanced structural composites based on the Corvette Vehicle In the application of carbon fiber panel, he suggested that as far as possible we choose the familiar form of materials and processing technology, controllability is the key to the success of the new carbon fiber components.To limit the possible use of 'news' in new applications, that is to say to be limited The number of new technologies and processes in the automotive industry Because of the inherent amount of material and process variables in carbon composites, the complexity of implementing the results can be greatly increased by blindly adding new things that are less familiar, As an example, when we work on a Class A surface, the variables are magnified 100 times.
Voss also emphasized the importance of joining technology for the introduction of carbon components that must be integrated with different materials in the automotive structure.In his presentation, he said the current high cost of carbon materials makes the cost competitiveness of carbon composites Seemingly very low, but it is recommended that you look forward, compared to the cost of scrap, carbon fiber is a wise choice.Finally he looked forward to the outcome of the conference look forward to:'I am very pleased to see this room in the next 20 years to bring us What is it?
Anthony Vicari, from Luxor Research Institute in Boston, USA, gave a speech on the future growth opportunities and challenges of carbon fiber composites.First he reported on the forecast data of carbon fiber industry development, which will reach 151,000 metric tons of carbon fiber by 2020 MT) / year, actual production is expected to be reduced by about 10-20%. By 2025, the demand for carbon fiber is expected to reach 228,000 tons / year, of which wind energy and aviation industry is the fastest growing.If these data really achieved, in 2025 Years ago, car use of carbon fiber penetration will increase, no longer exclusive luxury models.
Demand for FRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics) for railways, building repairs and large marine vessels will continue to grow, he said, noting that the use of fiberglass bogies to replace steel in railway applications can reduce the weight of railway vehicles closer 1 metric ton, and good corrosion resistance, can improve the maintenance and service life.He also saw the carbon fiber bridge maintenance in the big market, he said the current preparation and use of FRP technology is very mature, but the infrastructure market has not set his sights Put it all above.All of the trigger point only need to wait for the time to mature, such as the United States LeMond complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop low-cost carbon fiber, and then commissioned the manufacturer foundry by FARO Technologies and Oxford Performance Materials and other innovative manufacturers to develop improved repair techniques can be completed.
In the field of wind energy, the carbon fiber road may not be too smooth, more than one spokesman has pointed out that wind turbine manufacturers are looking for high modulus glass fiber instead of carbon fiber.Dynamical Aerodynamics of the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory Executive Brandon Ennis cites data provided by MAKE, a market intelligence consultancy, to analyze pricing and supply chain issues and create sensitivities that are the reason why wind turbine manufacturers struggle to get out of their carbon footprint.
Ennis stressed that wind energy applications require a carbon technician shift from aerospace performance to cost-driven design.Although carbon has little application in 4-8 MW turbine blades in 2015, he said Sandia, ORNL and Montana State University has begun a two-year joint study to evaluate the commercial viability of cost-competitive custom-made carbon-fiber composites for wind turbine blades, so he said that in the future for turbines below 5 MW and above 10 MW It is still possible to use some carbon material.
The picture above shows Sandia's data from MAKE Consulting in a conference presentation
Composite material recovery
During the Composites Conference 2017, a panel on the recycling of composites was formed by Geoffrey Wood from the Composites Recycling Technology Center. The panel includes Mark Voss of GM and Anthony Vicari of Lux Research.
Geoffrey Wood emphasizes that composite waste streams can drive up carbon fiber sales by opening new markets because of the lower cost of carbon fiber reinforced composite materials and all panelists agree that with automation and part-processing efficiency Improve the future scrap production will be reduced, the composite industry there are many things to do in order to seize the leadership of the replacement link.
At the meeting, all panel members agreed that carbon fiber-reinforced resin materials are more dependent on effective recycling technologies because of their wider use, and although most of the current recycling efforts are focused on the waste materials of carbon fiber reinforced resin material processing, the spokesman Pointed out that the demand for recycling of used composite parts is on the rise and will account for a large part of the recovered waste by the late 1920s.
At the meeting, there were many bright spots in the exchange among the group members. An excerpt is now:
'Frazier Barnes from ELG Carbon Fiber Ltd. '
According to the data, recyclable carbon fibers have a market of up to 55,000 tons / year and 50,000 tons of recycled waste each year. Barnes pointed out that carbon fiber is expected to produce 120,000 tons a year, but demand is as high as 25,000 tons a year, Recycling carbon fiber to make up. At the same time, recycled carbon fiber is more competitive than recycled metals and plastics.
ELG has some success with recycled carbon fiber, and its carbon-recycled material has been tested on sixteen road-based vehicles in 19 U.S. cars for 200,000 vehicles a year if the test passes Car body using 6 kg of carbon recycled materials. In addition to this project, other commercial production of the project include:
① Rail Bogie: A CFRP bogie frame made of compression-molded prepreg, 80% recycled carbon fiber and 20% virgin carbon fiber to reduce cutting weight by 75% and reduce wheel-to-rail load by 40%.
② Automotive oil pan: The use of carbon-filled carbon-filled carbon fiber to make mats, a one-time, net-shaped component that saves 30% of the weight compared to glass fiber reinforced plastics (GFRP).
③ seat: relative to the original metal parts 13 kg, carbon recycled materials can provide parts weighing only 2.5 kg.
Barnes believes the biggest challenge for recycling carbon fiber is identifying and showing the consistency of the fibers and components for the unsolved problems today.
'Tia Benson Tolle from Boeing '
Boeing's goal is zero-waste manufacturing, including zero landfill, zero-hazardous waste, zero water absorption and greenhouse gas emissions. "The key to that goal, Benson Tolle said, is to make the manufacture of composite parts more efficient, Minimize waste from top to bottom.
'Mark Janney from Carbon Conversions Inc. '
Carbon Conversions Inc. is producing five different series of products from carbon fiber recycling Janney cited several examples of closed-loop composite materials such as the U.S. Racing Team Oracle in collaboration with Carbon Transfer Corp., which reclaimed one of the racing yachts, New Zealand's Core Builders Composites manufactures next-generation vessels with carbon-recycled fiber products Trek bike frames are re-applied by Crawford Composites to carbon recovery products to build Formula Racing cars.
Janney also mentioned that in late 2016, Hexcel invested in them to fund carbon conversion companies to enhance research and development activities in the area of reuse and life-cycle collection and disposal.
During the discussion stage, both ELG carbon and carbon conversion companies mentioned that the flatness and consistency of carbon recovery products are good, and the number of customers who carry out post-repair work has dropped dramatically.
'From Toray Industries Co., Ltd. Kitano '
Kitano said Toray's new carbon fiber production facility in Spartanburg, SC, will begin operations in 2018 after Toray manufactured the carbon fiber recycling facility in Japan online.
Advances in Carbon Fiber Technology
The technical developments covered by the 2017 Carbon Fiber Conference cover the full range of carbon fiber technologies, from the manufacture of carbon fiber precursors to the just-mentioned recycling work. There are many technical highlights at the conference,
Adaptive mold system
The adaptive mold system was developed by ADAPA from Denmark and introduced by its member ChristianRaun.The system uses digital control to shape plastics, concrete, glass and composites into simple hyperbolic shapes with simple equipment There are also many types of products to be machined, with a single forming system that can produce curved surfaces with a surface radius of less than 200 mm and flat panels up to 6 mx 2 m.
Processes used in production include resin infusion treatment, thermoforming of thermoplastics, molding of foam cores, and shaping of UV-cured resin composites.
Prepreg for fast curing in one minute
The company that produces 1 minute fast curing prepregs is Solvay, originally designed to meet the demands of automated processing and one minute beats.The SolvaLite 730 prepreg uses high performance unsaturated vinyl ester , Its performance close to the typical epoxy resin, but the low enthalpy, processing speed, good stability at room temperature, non-sticky.
Lewis Williams, Solvay's participant, described the key to a one-minute beating:
Heating process to be reserved for warm-up time and running time;
Have a quick closing tool
The temperature of the mold surface should be the same;
Williams said there is still room for growth in such vinyl ester prepregs and Solvay will continue its efforts to improve performance and reduce costs.
Low-cost carbon fiber
Low-cost carbon fiber is the result of all efforts to produce output, the United States Oak Ridge National Laboratory research and development, the United States advanced composite materials manufacturing Institute responsible for the commercialization of the required data.Research found so far low-cost carbon fiber (LCCF) The quality and industrial grade carbon fiber products.
Renewable acrylonitrile
Acrylonitrile is a key precursor of carbon fiber, almost all of which was previously extracted from petroleum, but more recently South Research has set up a pilot plant to develop non-petroleum-based acrylonitrile that uses a sugar-carbon conversion process to prepare acrylonitrile, Amit Goyal, a research company delegate, introduced this.
The pilot plant is expected to produce 0.5 tons of acrylonitrile per year by 2019. The goal of Southern Research is to have a commercial plant capable of producing up to 5,000 tons of renewable acrylonitrile by the end of 2021. The commercial production of acrylonitrile is expected to be Making the cost less than a dollar per tonne, if this data is achieved, renewable acrylonitrile will reduce manufacturing costs by 15% to 20%.