Recycling and Recovery Infrastructure for Composite Materials – Techno-economic, logistic and environmental perspectives

Waste masses of composite materials like Carbon and Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP/GFRP) used in rotor blades of wind plants or Expanded Polystyrene (EP) used as external thermal insulation in buildings, will be strongly increasing in the future. This demands for the implementation of appropriate recycling and recovery structures for such materials. Against this background, we present a methodology to design future recycling and recovery infrastructures for composite materials regarding technical, economic but also environmental aspects. Herein, we first analyze the future waste masses at a high spatial resolution, which allows us to regard for logistics aspects in collection and transportation of these often low-value but high-volume materials. Afterwards, we explore and evaluate the potential recycling and recovery paths from a techno-economic perspective. We also conduct a Lifecycle Impact Assessment to quantify the environmental impact of the different end-of-life treatment paths. Integrating these different perspectives, we then determine optimal future recycling and recovery structures using a mathematical optimization model. With this model, we can analyze the trade-off between economic and environmental objectives. Also, the model allows us to systematically analyze scenarios and sensitivities, e.g. regarding the impact of political regulations on the design of the required treatment infrastructures or the impact of changing market prices for secondary materials.