As the utilization of composite materials using lightweight and high-strength carbon fiber has been increasing mainly for aircraft parts, nearly 1,000 tons of waste composite materials are produced annually and are disposed of as industrial waste in our company. The production of carbon fiber includes a large energy load and generates more than twice the amount of CO2 in comparison with the production of aluminum. In addition, disposing of composite materials as industrial waste also has an impact on the environment. In order to solve this problem, we focused on composite material recycling technology and evaluated the performance of recycled carbon fiber and studied its strength characteristics. This paper describes our efforts to build a new value chain that extracts recycled carbon fiber from waste composite material aiming at the reduction of environmental impact.
