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X Endless: Neil Conley's Sustainable Carbon Fibre Composite

By Lisa Smith - July 19, 2010

in Object Culture

Neil Conley, Coroflot member and a 3d design graduate, of Northumbria University has developed a sustainable carbon fibre composite, entitled X Endless. The project relies on a recent development in composite recycling: a specific pyrolysis method that that unwinds the carbon fibers from the composites that bind them, allowing them to be re-used.

This method has allowed Neil to mine unlocked carbon fibers from obsolete aircraft and mix them with a bio-resin derived from plant oils to create a new carbon-fibre composite that can reduce and prevent carbon fibre waste.

The material is demonstrated in a series of two cremation urns that "aim to demonstrate not only the endlessly recyclable potential of the material, but also how relevant material sourcing can re-inject relevance to objects of narrative and poetry." They represent both "a carbon cycle for the wider carbon cycle" and the mining of aircraft material from their graveyards, where they would otherwise lay unused.

We love this project not only for its impressive level of execution, but also for its excellent demonstration of composite recycling, creating a workable, beautiful material (none of these images are renderings) with many applications. We wonder how the use of bio-resin and recaptured carbon would affect the price of carbon-composite; maybe we'll start seeing it around more. According to Neil, he's already in talks with a Formula 1 and Aerospace manufacturer, so we may not have to wait too long.

See his sketches after the jump or at his awesome portfolio on Coroflot.

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Chief

14 years ago

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the problem here is that people make claims that are unsubstantiated. The fact is that we don't really know if its better for the environment, to recycle or just burn. Secondly, we cannot have fibres of the same strength after recycling. They are in fact shorter, so we are limited to the reuse possibilities, and this is without talking about the degradation during the process.
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Lawrence

14 years ago

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(@Rob) To be honest I never looked up how much gas pyrolyzing a piece of composite would give out, and how much of it can you reclaim to use as fuel to run your recycling operation, but I really doubt that there is enough energy in that gas there to be of any significant, comparing how much energy you have to put in to burn everything into soot.

We pyrolyze some of our parts occasionally to check the parts, and let me tell ya, I don't go down there to pick it up till the air is well ventilated for an hour. i have enough contact with resins, mold releases, solvents, and all them nasties in this industry...thank you very much.

you have to wash the soot off, with water that's going to get contaminated ....I suppose...

One other obstacle for recycling composite is that most composite layups/plys are all cut into pieces of various sizes, so at the end you get all these fibers of various of length. unless you get some old lady to weave it into a cloth form, you end up with using it in chopped fiber form to put into plastic. Where you will end up with just a very ugly black plastic for use in injection molding. Fine for an engineer like me, but not something these ID guys or most consumer would drool for.

It's much better if the designer would focuses more on designing composite parts and product that would last, than to designing it into disposables that need to be recycled...
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Manu T

14 years ago

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One good method for composite recycling will be using thermoplastic composites instead of thermosets. I am doing some work with these:

http://materialdesigns.wordpress.com/2010/07/19/my-experiments-with-truth-thermoplastic-composite/

In this case, if you have to recycle, then the raw materials can be reclaimed by dissolving/melting the thermoplastic, which is not possible with conventional thermoset composites.
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JAMES

14 years ago

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From what I understand of the project, the idea was simply to address the 'misuse' of carbon fibre for its exclusivity - and to demonstrate the POTENTIAL of reusing carbon fibres. The choice to produce urns was probably to inject some beauty to the project - which i think it does.

The fact that any graduates would attempt to address issues such as these is only a positive thing. It shows a great drive to explore all things sustainable.

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Rob Stead

14 years ago

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There are actually several different, energy efficient methods of recycling carbon fibre composites, whereby you also capture the waste gas which can be combusted to fuel the recycling process. I agree that urns are not exactly the the best use of the recycled materials - which can have mechanical properties approaching that of virgin CF composites. We are running a conference on this very subject, find out more at www.gocarbonfibre.com for further details.
Rob
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LAWRENCE

14 years ago

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From a guy who does design with composite every day. Recycling composite is a noble goal, but not really realistic.

The most common way of extracting the carbon fiber out of a cured composite is burning the resin away, a energy intensive operation, specially since most aerospace composites use high temperature cured resins, you really need the oven on High. Let's not even mentioned the amount of toxic fumes that this would give out..... you can do it with exotic chemicals as well, but I don't even want to go there....I know a lot of guys working in the composite shops for years, I also knows a lot of them who had one form of cancer or another. So, be warned.

Even if you do burn the resin away, the resulting carbon fiber is so contaminated with soot that it's strength would decrease dramatically, no one would probably use it for anything aside for decorative purposes.

Most airplanes in the junk yards are from the 60-70's. the composite contents in them are very small, composite us in the aircraft industry only reach significant mass fraction only very recently, and those aircraft are very much still flying....

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Alphie

14 years ago

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Other sites list the application of this process to manufacturing funeral urns, which is a waste. Why was this fact omitted from the post? http://www.dezeen.com/2010/07/19/earnurn-by-neil-conley/
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daniel erwin

14 years ago

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Looks like great work - and if the future *was* in plastics, and is currently in (mostly micro)biology, then the present must be in bio-plastics!
But I'm confused - why go to all the trouble to get this material that's interesting exclusively for its extraordinary tensile strength just to make an urn from it? Wouldn't it make more sense to use it in some sort of transportation to play up that energy-conservation angle?
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