Jean Zeid 06:52, February 13, 2024
Every morning, Jean Zeid delivers the best in terms of innovation. This Tuesday, he is interested in the Fairmat startup which has developed an innovative recycling method for carbon fiber composites.
This Tuesday morning, we are interested in carbon fiber.
Airplanes, wind turbines, racing cars, carbon fiber composites have the advantage of being as strong as steel but much lighter. France is also the leader in production in the sector. Except that this production still has some defects, it generates a lot of CO2 and unfortunately its recycling is still in its infancy, or even non-existent.
For what reasons ?
It must be said that this composite material has been designed to resist the most aggressive chemicals and extreme temperatures, which prevents traditional recycling. It is therefore either cremated or buried.
Many start-ups are lining up to take up the challenge of recycling, and the most promising is from Nantes, it is called Fairmat and was created in 2020 around an innovative recycling method.
What does this company offer to help this sector emerge?
Well, in its factory near Nantes, Fairmat relies on the good old chip system to reduce the environmental impact of recycling. You heard correctly. The idea is to reduce the carbon fiber into square chips measuring around ten centimeters on each side. Their particularity: they are barely thicker than a few microns, a few thousandths of a millimeter. To achieve this fineness and preserve the characteristics of the material despite fibers of different origin. Whether it comes from aviation or wind turbines, it is not the same thing. But to achieve the same result, Fairmat relies on intelligent robots equipped with supercharged artificial intelligence sensors.
A suspended camera transmits to the cutting robot the characteristics and exact topography of the part to be recycled, before the robot moves on to high-precision cutting. In a few seconds, the part is reduced to chips. This is the goal: to produce perfect chips in a minimum of time.
And Fairmat doesn't plan to stop there.
What the company is trying is to test an industrial process to reuse this carbon fiber. And it intends to turn to other non-recycled or non-recyclable materials using traditional methods to diversify in its 3,500 m² factory.
Even though Fairmat is still in the testing phase, the goal is to recycle 3,000 tons of fiber per year. An approach that attracted Decathlon to design its range of padel rackets available this year. But also Withings for its connected scales. One kilo of this recycled composite emits five times less CO2 to produce than new carbon fiber.