Recycling end-of-life sails by carbon fibre reclamation and composite remanufacture using the HiPerDiF fibre alignment technology

Many high-performance sails are flexible, carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer composites. For example, 30% by weight of ‘3Di’ sails produced by the world’s largest sail maker, North Sails, are made up by carbon fibres (CF). The yachting industry currently has no end-of-life (EOL) waste-management plan for these sails, meaning valuable materials, including CF, mostly end up as waste which is detrimental to our environment. In this paper, a recycling pathway for EOL 3Di sails is described. CFs, reclaimed via the DEECOM® superheated steam/pressure-swing process, retained 95% virgin stiffness, 94% retained virgin strength, and 97% virgin strain to failure. The reclaimed CFs were subsequently aligned into discontinuous short fibre reinforced prepreg-like tape using the University of Bristol’s water-based, High-Performance Discontinuous Fibre (HiPerDiF) manufacturing technology. The tensile and flexural properties of this material were characterised, and two yachting-based demonstrators manufactured to show the possibility of a circular recycling pathway from EOL sail to structure.