DENVER — As industries increasingly turn to carbon fiber due to its lightweight and durable properties, real environmental costs are beginning to add up. A Denver-based company called Vartega is finding a niche in the growing carbon fiber industry while also working to mitigate its environmental impact.
Carbon fiber’s applications span from the aerospace and automotive industries to high-end sports equipment. Jack Burns, a customer success engineer at Vartega, notes how impactful carbon fiber production can be on the environment.
“Carbon fiber is one of the most energy-intensive materials to produce on the planet,” said Burns. “When you switch to our material, the clock of the carbon footprint is essentially resetting because this material would all be buried in a landfill if we didn't get it from these companies.”
Vartega is one of only a handful of companies in the world that recycles carbon fiber. It receives carbon fiber that is no longer in a usable format from companies and uses a mechanical recycling method to break it down into small pieces. Vartega increases the density of the material by adding a small percentage of thermoplastic to closely resemble the properties of virgin carbon fiber.
Their main customers are compounding companies, which combine the recycled Vartega carbon fiber with a resin and further break it down into small pebbles that are sold to manufacturing companies that use the carbon fiber to make products.
The result is a carbon fiber product that is up to 50% less expensive and reduces the carbon footprint of creating carbon fiber by 96 to 99%. Vartega claims that their product works the same as newly created carbon fiber.
“We don't expect people to change the way they're doing everything just to use this new material,” said Burns. “Especially if we want them to save money and increase sustainability, we don't want them to be doing anything more energy intensive.”
Vartega is looking into other types of carbon fiber recycling that use a chemical process to recycle the resin that is usually used in most carbon fiber applications, especially as the industry continues to grow.
“I believe more and more applications will use carbon fiber,” Burns predicted. “I see the whole pie growing in itself, not just Vartega growing a piece of the pie.”
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