Integrating carbon fiber reclamation and additive manufacturing for recycling CFRP waste

There is a large amount of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) waste generated annually, mainly due to the difficulty in recycling CFRPs. This work presents a novel additive manufacturing-based recycling approach that can be used to reclaim CFRP waste and to re-manufacture the carbon fiber into 3D printed composite parts. A trial of this idea was set up, in which carbon fiber was first reclaimed from CFRP waste using supercritical fluid and then mixed with Poly-Ether-Ether-Ketone to produce composite filaments. The filaments were then fed into a printer of fused deposition modeling (i.e., a 3D printing process) and the recycled CFRP parts were fabricated. The engineering application-oriented tests demonstrate that the reclaimed carbon fiber can modify the performances of 3D printed part effectively in terms of mechanical strength, electrical conductivity, heat conduction and wear resistance. This work illustrates that the additive manufacturing-based recycling approach offers a possible strategy to recycle CFRP waste and fabricate high-performance engineering parts with complex geometries, which are economical and environmentally friendly.