Life Cycle Assessment of Reuse/ Remanufacture End-of-Life Fibre Reinforced Polymer in Composite Industry

Abstract

Remanufacturing is an important strategy in promoting product circular economy and material efficiency. The increasing demand of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) composite for lightweight construction has led to high volumes of composite waste after their operational life. Recycling thermoplastic composites via remanufacturing into virgin-like structure and quality can prevent the composite from going into the waste stream and thus reducing environmental pollution. A life cycle assessment (LCA) is crucial in evaluating the environmental performance of a remanufactured product compared to its virgin counterparts. LCA software tool allows modelling of the product life cycle and further investigation of the hotspots together with the potential optimisation to improve the production efficiency and to reduce ecological impacts. The aim of this thesis was to provide a comprehensive environmental analysis of remanufacturing thermoplastic composite laminate (tp-CL), i.e. Reverse-Thermoforming. The LCA analysis tool, GaBi Software was utilised in this work with the application of ReCiPe(H) 2016 Midpoint method. For a better comparison, the production of virgin composite laminate was conducted with the dataset available in the GaBi pre-installed Database. The results showed that the global warming potential (GWP) for remanufactured polyamide 6-carbon fibre (PA6-CF) composite laminate was 61% less than its virgin counterpart. This indicates that 12.5 kg of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas is avoided from being emitted into the atmosphere for remanufacturing 1 kg of PA6-CF composite laminate. For polypropylene-glass fibre (PP-GF) composite laminate, the impact assessment results showed that the water consumption potential for remanufactured CL was only 22.3% of its virgin counterpart.