Fiber reinforced composite materials have the advantages of light weight, high strength, corrosion resistance, fatigue resistance, good forming process, strong designability, etc., and are widely used in aerospace, wind power blades, sports and leisure, transportation and bridge construction and other fields of the components, and the amount of composite materials represented by carbon fiber is increasing. But the more widely composite materials are used, the more they are produced.
As shown in the figure below, in the production process of carbon fiber, prepreg and composite products, it is inevitable to produce a large amount of waste fiber reinforced composites.
In 2018, the total output of composite materials in China was 4.3 million tons, and it is forecast to reach about 5.56 million tons in 2023. It is expected that by 2034, the global volume of carbon fiber composite fan blade waste will reach more than 225,000 tons. It has overtaken Germany and Japan and ranked second in the world. At present, most of the production technology of composite materials is still using the method of manual laying. In recent years, the amount of newly increased composite materials is also high, so the recycling of composite materials has a large market value in our country.