Lowering the cost of carbon fiber-First licensee

Carbon fiber offers a great many performance and light weighting benefits for composites. Lower cost manufacture and increased use of recycled material now promise to widen the range of applications that could benefit from its properties.

High cost has been a major block to widespread use of carbon fiber as a strong, stiff reinforcement for advanced composites. One initiative underway to reduce these costs is taking place in the United States where researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Oak   Ridge   National Laboratory (ORNL) have demonstrated a production method they estimate will reduce the cost of carbon fiber as much as 50 percent and the energy used in its production by more than 60 percent. ORNL’s new lower cost method, dem- onstrated at its Carbon Fiber Technology Facility, builds on more than a decade of research in the area.  The researchers’ success promises to accelerate adoption of carbon fiber composites in high-volume industrial applications including automotive, wind turbines, compressed gas storage and building infrastructure. After extensive analysis and successful prototyping by industrial part- ners, last year ORNL made the new method available for licensing.

First licensee

LeMond Composites – headed by three-time cycling Tour de France champion Greg LeMond – is a new company offering solutions for high-volume, low-cost carbon fiber.  The licensing agreement with ORNL will make the Oak Ridge-based company the first to offer this new carbon fiber to the transportation, renewable energy and infrastructure markets.

LeMond Composites adds that the carbon fiber will provide advantages to many industries by improving strength, stiffness and weight reduction, and the process will have global applica- tions. The company is now ready to move forward with scaling up the technology.

Growing demand from the automotive industry is due in large part to the global push to increase the fuel economy of nearly every vehicle produced. In the USA, the demand is being driven by the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. These standards de- mand a fleet-wide average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg by 2025. The single best way to improve fuel economy is to reduce the weight of the cars and their component parts. For the wind power industry, carbon fiber can be used to make turbine blades lighter and stiffer, thereby increasing the efficiency of the system. Previously, carbon fiber was too expensive for maximum utilization in this market. Additional sectors, including shipping, air travel and marine, could see significant energy savings through the use of carbon fiber in the light weighting of their containers, planes and ships. Carbon fiber composites can also be used to build, reinforce, or repair bridges, tunnels, commercial and residential structures.