End of life technologies for flax-thermoplastic composites and their effects on the environment

Flax fibre composites are now widely used in various industries, such as automotive, in replacement of less sustainable materials. One of the remaining challenges is to define the most environment-friendly end-of-life options for the flax fibre reinforced plastics based on an environmental evaluation and comparison of the available techniques. In this work, three end-of-life possibilities for flax fibre reinforced thermoplastics were investigated: chemical recycling, mechanical recycling and incineration. It was found that the mechanical recycling and incineration are the most promising techniques. Mechanically recycled flax thermoplastic material has proven to be equivalent to a random mat composite with less than 10% difference in properties. The recycled composites could be thus used as a replacement for random mat composites, or injection moulded components. A comparative life cycle analysis study looking into these different end-of-life techniques was performed and it was found that the mechanical recycling scenario is the most promising technique from an environmental perspective with a large decrease of environmental burden compared to the chemical recycling.status: publishe