Glass fibre composites recycling using the fluidised bed: A study into the economic viability in the UK

Abstract

As it stands, the UK has no commercialised process capable of recycling waste glass fibre reinforced thermosets, resulting in disposal via landfill or energy from waste facilities. Thermal recycling within a fluidised bed process has been demonstrated to successfully recover clean glass fibre from composite waste materials, such as wind turbine blades, and successfully reuse it as a reinforcement phase in second life composites. If brought to a commercial scale, this technology has the potential to divert up to 1200 kt of mixed glass fibre reinforced plastics (GRP) waste and an additional 240 kt of wind blade waste away from UK landfill sites over the next fifteen years, while offsetting the environmental impact and raw material consumption of virgin glass fibre production. Despite this, commercialisation and long-term success depend on economic viability and resilience of the recycling technology, ensuring that sufficient value is added to offset costs required to bring recyclate products to market. In this study, techno-economic analysis was used to analyse the economic outlook for at scale fluidised bed recycling plants within the context of the current and future UK glass fibre reinforced plastic waste landscape. It was found that fluidised bed recycling plants operating well within current UK waste volumes can maintain gate fees that are competitive with landfill while producing recycled glass fibre (rGF) at less than 50% of the prices of virgin counterparts. Plants processing single waste streams, such as wind blades, can maintain long term profitability despite irregular flow of waste feedstock availability. Despite higher transportation cost, total recycling costs are lower for national level plants. Therefore, it is recommended to accept composites from multiple waste streams to maximise operating capacity, profits and return on investment.