MC4

Lightweight and highly performant, composite materials are essential to numerous industries, with the major contribution of technical textiles using carbon and glass fibres. However, sustainability is currently a major area of improvement: 98% of composite materials end up in landfills at the end of their life. MC4 is a partnership of 16 European organisations aiming at designing solutions for this.

MC4 develops the following processes to recycle carbon and glass fibre materials:

• Chemical recycling for the efficient separation of matrix and carbon fibres
• Processing technologies for the reutilisation of prepreg scraps
• Technologies for processing recycled carbon fibres to produce tapes, fabrics and nonwovens
• Mechanical recycling of glass fibre composites for direct reuse in new components
• New resins for better recyclability of glass fibre components

These processes are tested with the development of pilot products in applicative markets: boatbuilding, aerospace, transports, sports equipment and street furniture.

The project wishes to contribute to the evolution of standards in the use of composite materials in the targeted sectors, and more especially regarding the use of recycled/reused materials.

Reason for applying to HSbooster.eu services

The use of recycled glass and carbon fibre materials in composites is currently at a low level. With the development of 4 different processes, MC4 will provide solutions for different applicative markets (boatbuilding, aerospace, transports, sports equipment and street furniture). These markets have different standards, and they would like to understand what would be the best approach to compare the results of our R&D activities with the currently existing standards. In a second time, they would like to contribute to the evolution of these standards, and to work on the place that can take recycled glass and carbon fibres in composites.