Challenges and opportunities of implementing Industry 4.0 in recycling carbon fiber reinforced composites

At the time of unprecedented development of digital technologies, business owners across various industries need to stay up-to-date in terms of using cutting-edge technologies such as Industry 4.0 to ensure competitive performance. There are still many areas where their positive implications of digital technologies have not been applied. For example, the end-of-life (EoL) waste from the automotive, aerospace, and wind energy industries is still accumulating in landfills. At present, an increasing number of vehicles, airplanes, and wind turbine blades are made of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites (CFRPs) leading to an urgent demand for implementing sustainable waste disposal strategies. Thus, recycling CFRPs is a key research area that provides a potential for improvement, particularly, in terms of digitalization. This study addresses the issues prevalent in this sphere and proposes Industry 4.0 related technologies to be integrated into the CFRP recycling supply chain stages, including waste collection, dismantling, transportation, recycling, and re-manufacturing. For this purpose, key technologies were selected from the literature review, smart recycling trends were defined and relevant analysis was carried out to map technologies onto the CFRP recycling supply chain.