Recycling of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Polymers—Review—Part 2: Recovery and Application of Recycled Carbon Fibers

The paper presents some examples of new technological solutions for the recovery and re-use of recycled carbon fiber in automotive and railway industries, as well as in aviation and wind turbine constructions. The new technologies of fiber recovery that are described can enable the mass-scale use of recycled carbon fiber in the future

Poly(butylene terephthalate)/polylactic acid based copolyesters and blends: miscibility-structure-property relationship

22 pags., 12 figs., 5 tabs.A series of aliphatic-aromatic copolyesters based on poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) have been synthesized by means of a novel reactive blending procedure coupled with polycondensation in melt. The obtained copolymers were further compared with PBT and PLA homopolymers and PBT/PLA non-compatibilized physical blends in order to investigate the effect of transesterification reactions on the structural, morphological, thermal and mechanical performance. Properties of the obtained materials have been found strictly dependent on the preparation process and blend/copolymer composition. The PBT/PLA physical blends appeared as highly crystalline, phase separated systems that exhibit brittle behavior. On the other hand, the applied method of reactive blending enhanced interfacial adhesion and promoted the arrangement of PBT and PLA in blocks of different lengths. Although the PBT-b-PLA copolyesters were found to be miscible in amorphous phase, the phase separation that has arisen from PBT crystalline domains occurs. Along with an increase in PLA weight fraction in copolymers, the length of aromatic sequences decreased which in turn resulted in shifting the values of melting temperatures (T) toward lower ones and decreased the degree of crystallinity (x). Moreover, PBT-b-PLA copolymer with 30 wt% of PLA units has been demonstrated as a promising thermoplastic shape memory polymer (SMP) with a switching temperature of 35°C.This work was financially supported by the West Pomeranian University of Technology, Start-Up Deans Grant for Young Scientists

Thermal characterization of polymer composites with nanocrystalline maghemite

Samples of multiblock poly(ether-ester) copolymer doped with magnetic γFe2O3 nanoparticles (at small concentrations of 0.1 wt. % and 0.3 wt. %) have been investigated by DSC method to study the melting and crystallization behavior. Two forms of magnetic γFe2O 3 nanoparticle filler were used: solid-state grains and a suspension of γFe2O3 with palmitic acid in toluene. Application of the solid filler caused formation of agglomerates of size of about 20 μm while in the suspension form separate nanoparticles were in the range 10-20 run. The thermal and thermo-oxidative stability of composites was analyzed by conventional TGA analysis. The DSC results showed that crystallization and, to a smaller extent, melting, were considerably affected by the introduction of magnetic nanoparticles. The main influence is a shift in the crystallisation temperature up to 20 °C and melting/glass transition shift up to 6 °C. Thermogravimetric analysis showed significant enhancement of thermal and thermo-oxidative stability of the composites with respect to pure PEE. The dependence of thermal parameters on the concentration of magnetic filler has shown that the largest agglomerates produced the biggest change in all thermal parameters