Welcome to … The South West Composites Gateway/ Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre Workshop on Life Cycle Assessment of Composites

My background … UWIST (now Cardiff) BSc chemistry/polymer Thames (now Greenwich)MSc physics of materials PlymouthPhD hybrid composites RNEC HMS Thunderercomposite structures Plymouth ACMCcomp. manufacturing PlymouthPGDipEd (Adult Ed.) increasing interest in quality/ sustainability issues

My background (continued) CEngChartered Engineer CEnvChartered Environmentalist CSciChartered Scientist FIMMM, FInstNDT, FIAQP EPSRC Peer Review College CIMNFC Programme Steering Committee DTI Technology Programme assessor FP6 BioComp reviewer

Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre composites research in Plymouth since 1967 focus on manufacturing since the 1980s NAB-funded ACMC launched 1987 BEng Composite Engineering since 1990 BSc Marine and Composites Tech since 2001 CPD for industry >2500 delegates

Commercial activity … some examples

Sustainability Brundtland: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Three (or four) “pillars”: Economic Environmental Social Governance

Mankind is her/his own worst enemy Population over 7 billion and rising “world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075” (World Population to 2300, United Nations, 2004) “10.9 billion by 2100” (World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision, United Nations, 2013)

From UN 2013 report …

Resources … are finite as we have only one planet every additional person will expect their fair share of the total 10.9b/7b is a 56% increase  one fair share is reduced to 64% of the total resource Do not do (the wrong) things right, but do the right thing

Rant over … … but for the composites industry we need life cycle assessment/analysis: thermosets vs thermoplastics natural vs man-made fibres … to satisfy all stakeholders … and to provide quantitative evidence that the chosen route is the correct choice

Philosophy Today March 2005 Ben Basing on Our Responsibility to Future Generations “… the major issue in valuing things for future generations, is the fact that different people value the same thing differently and the same person might give the same thing different values at different times ….. we will have real problems trying to assess what will be of value to people living in an inevitably changed world”.

Thermoplastics vs thermosets Thermoplastics + recycle at similar duty -high process temperatures -use limited to process temperature - 200°C Thermosets + low process temperatures + usable at temperatures close to process - re-use limited as fillers

Natural vs man-made fibres Natural + Carbon neutral -fertilisers, herbicides, pesticides -variable quality -dispersed production Man-made fibres + uniformity of product -high-energy production processes Nilmini Dissanayake, PhD, Plymouth, 2011 Life cycle assessment of flax fibres for the reinforcement of polymer matrix composites

End of life Reuse Design for dis-assembly Recycle Pyrolysis Incineration Composting but biogas is ~60-65% CH 4, 35% CO 2 Landfill

Drivers: producer responsibility End of Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive (2000/53/EC) Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (2002/96/EC) o largely driven by landfill considerations o thermosets are difficult to recycle o but thermoplastics use high temp processes

Life cycle assessment very diverse options are available for the design and manufacture of composites most LCA are qualitative can we compare chalk and cheese in a quantitative way ?

… penultimate slide from QCC Code of Conduct “the only stupid question is the one that is not asked” Samuel Ho “Operations and Quality Management” Thomson Business Press, 1999, page 197.

Programme 10:00Jerry Corless Welcome and introductions 10:10John Summerscales (ACMC) The context for the meeting 10:40Andrew Norton (Renuables) Life Cycle Assessment 11:10Tea break 11:30Flavie Lowres (BRE) Life Cycle Assessment 12:00Ian Hamerton (University of Surrey) Thermoplastics vs thermosetting resins for composites 12:30Lunch 13:30Stephen Pickering (University of Nottingham) Routes to recycling or disposal of thermoset composites 14:00SimaPro software demonstration 15:00Networking and informal discussions 16:00Close