Evaluation of Polymer Matrix Composite Waste Recycling Methods

Abstract

Polymer-based matrix composite materials are in high demand in many different fields: aeronautics, pressure vessel manufacturing, wind turbine blade manufacturing, and others. Due to the great mechanical properties of fiber reinforced plastics, it is a desirable material for various applications, but at the same time its heterogenic structure makes the composite waste hard to recycle. This paper focuses on different fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) waste recycling methods and their comparison by carrying out literature review and using multi-criteria decision making analysis (MCDA). Four polymer matrix composite waste recycling methods are compared to calculate which one has the best sustainability performance based on the chosen criteria. Analytical Hierarchy Process and TOPSIS are applied for criteria weighing and method comparison. Sensitivity analysis is used to evaluate the obtained results. It is concluded that more studies concerning different FRP waste recycling method sustainability performance need to be done, to derive more data, that would make MCDA more reliable and also other FRP waste recycling methods could be compared. Another conclusion is that different methods have different strengths which makes it hard to compare them. While FRP waste recycling is getting more broadly used, there still is a lot of work to establish wide spread effective system of FRP waste recycling that is both economically viable and gives the best results concerning recycled material quality.

Use of Multi-Criteria TOPSIS Analysis to Define a Decarbonization Path in Colombia

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Thermal treatment of composite wastes for energy recovery

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End-of-Life Alternatives for Wind Turbine Blades: Sustainability Indices Based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals

“…There are several multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods to combine sustainability metrics. The effectiveness of MCDA for complex assessments has been established in the literature (Zanakis et al, 1998;Pohekar and Ramachandran, 2004;Chen et al, 2013;Jayaraman et al, 2015;Delvere et al, 2019;Sassanelli et al, 2019). Amongst the MCDA methods, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is the most frequently used method (Pohekar and Ramachandran, 2004;Liu et al, 2011;Diamond et al, 2014).…”