You hear a lot about carbon fiber these days. It’s difficult to find another substance that delivers so much strength while being so light. Those characteristics make it an important material in automotive, aerospace, and other industries, because it enables us to make vehicles lighter but no less strong. The lighter the vehicle, the less fuel it requires. The less fuel it consumes, the lower the emissions. That’s the good news.
But carbon fiber has a few drawbacks, as we learn from Andrew Maxey, founder of Vartega Carbon Recycling LLC, in the latest Innovation Zone presentation from AU 2016. It’s expensive to produce, for example, averaging $45 per pound in some cases. That means manufacturers have to pick and choose where to use it. And because it’s a composite—carbon fibers are usually embedded in a plastic matrix—it’s difficult to recycle. That means up to now, vast amounts of it have been thrown away every year. And because carbon fiber is such a stable and…