Westlake Epoxy and Alpha Recyclage Composites collaborate to advance composites recycling
Westlake Epoxy will collaborate with Alpha Recyclage Composites to support them in scaling up the recycling capacity for carbon fiber composite materials.
Alpha Recyclage Composites, a family-owned company based in Toulouse and Castelsarrasin, France, specializes in recycling carbon-fibers-reinforced composites through a patented steam pyrolysis process.
Alpha Recyclage Composites specializes in recycling carbon-fibers-reinforced composites. (Source: Alpha Recyclage Composites)
This innovative technology preserves the performance qualities of the carbon fibers used in composite materials recovered from applications including aerospace components, automotive parts, and wind turbine blades.
With Westlake’s support, Alpha Recyclage Composites is expanding its current batch unit to a semi-continuous operation, targeting a capacity of 1,000 metric tons of waste carbon fiber composites recycled per year by 2027.
The development of new applications utilizing the recovered carbon fibers could pair well with Westlake Epoxy’s EpoVIVE portfolio of resin grades with varying sustainable characteristics, like resins that utilize mass balanced renewable raw materials.
Westlake Epoxy also plans to leverage this collaboration with Alpha Recyclage to explore and develop solutions for the recovery of organic components from composite materials and how those recovered organics can be applied to further enhance circularity options for the composites value chain.
