Composite Recycling sustainably recycles composite plastics by separating glass fibers from the resin and produce reusable fibers to make new composites. Composite Recycling’s unique approach optimizes the process to obtain clean fibres and preserve their structural and functional integrity. This expands vastly the number of applications.

The company currently counts with the 3 co-founders and 4 advisors.

Fibreglass fuelled a boating boom, but they are now dumped and ageing craft are breaking up, releasing toxins and microplastics across the world. In addition, wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills. Europe has about 3,800 blades coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. And it is going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.

Glass fibre to composites market are expected to reach 3 billion pounds by 2024. The equipment used to recycle fibreglass without damaging the glass fibres is expensive and time-consuming.

The commpany offers three technology solutions to this problem:

- Proprietary Pyrolysis Technique: Composite Recycling has developed a proprietary technique. Pyrolysis is a process whereby a material is heated in an oxygen free environment. When a glass fibre reinforced plastic, like a boat hull, is introduced into a pyrolysis reactor the output is: pyrolysis oil, a non-condensable gas, and glass fibre.

- Valorization of Reclaimed Glass Fibre: Composite Recycling has developed a post treatment process which cleans the reclaimed glass fibres while maintaining the structural integrity such that they can be sold like virgin glass fibre to make new composite materials.

- Mobile Recycling Units: Composite Recycling plans to deploy mobile containerized pyrolysis reactors, with a capacity of 2 tonne/day of waste treated, to treat the waste at the source.

The three solutions offer various significant benefits:

- Proprietary Pyrolysis Technique: This technique both recaptures energy, making recycling energetically neutral minimizing costs, and maintains the reclaimed glass fibre at a very high quality increasing resell value, maximizing revenue.

- Valorization of Reclaimed Glass Fibre: This significantly increases the resale value and therefore the revenue from recycling composite materials like boat hulls or wind turbine blades.

- Mobile Recycling Units: This has several key advantages: 1) It reduces the shipping costs and logistics of shipping/exporting waste material, 2) It has a significantly lower CAPex than a centralized waste plant leading to faster revenue generation. 3) It can be quickly and easily deployed to disaster sites (e.g. boats destroyed in hurricanes) to limit environmental damage 4) It lends itself well to a franchise model where units can be sold to existing scrapyards (e.g. auto) that want to expand their business to boats.

Photo by Alvin Baez from Reuters