Evaluation of the Effect of Recycling of Carbon Fibers for Polypropylene Reinforcement

Abstract

The recycling of carbon fibers (CFs) from composites is becoming a necessity, with a gain both from economic and environmental point of views because carbon fibers are a high value-added material and the energy requirement for their production is pretty high. The use of such recycled fibers needs to find reliable applications to fully close the circular economic loop and here it is demonstrated that their applications as short fiber reinforcement in thermoplastics are not only convenient but as reliable as prostin fibers. This work wants to evaluate the effect of the recycling and reprocessing recycled carbon fibers versus pristine fibers, when inserted in polyprolylene (PP), in the presence of different amounts of compatibilizer to promote a better fiber/matrix interaction.