Preliminary Study of Energy and GHG Footprint of CFRP Recycling Method using Korea Database

Awareness of resource conservation and pollution prevention has been continually increasing. The proven benefits from CFRP's unique combination of light weight and high strength compare to conventional material is well suited for minimizing fuel consumption during vehicle in particular rail operation. Responding the awareness, this work intends to study CFRP's recycling method that is not only technical performance but also environmental view point. According to prior work of technical performance test, this work aims at quantifying the footprint of energy and GHG derived from the two appreciated performance of pyrolysis and acids recycling methods. The streamline LCA is the concept for systematic assessment. The boundary is scoped at the recycling activity, consequently, the data in and out from the specific target activity are obtained under the gate to gate data collection. Its function is recovery carbon fiber. To count and compare function, functional unit is set at 60% of recycling rate. Korea database is mainly source for acquiring the footprint of both. The numerical results presented that the energy footprint of acids and pyrolysis is 164.95 and 1,199.88 MJ-eq., respectively. Meantime, the GHG footprint of is 1,196.22 and 5,916.08 g CO2 eq. for acids and pyrolysis. In summary, the acids recycling method is, in regarding the environmental performance, better than pyrolysis recycling method.