Recycling of carbon fibers from structural composites of epoxy matrix by thermal pyrolysis and application as electrode materials in supercapacitors

Abstract

Carbon fiber reinforced polymeric composites are increasingly used materials in aeronautical and automotive industries, due to their excellent mechanical, chemical and electrical properties and low specific mass. In this way, there is a great concern regarding the components discard and recycling of the composites, which are considered as high economic value products to be wasted, mainly carbon fiber. The pyrolysis process has been one of the methods of recycling composites to recover carbon fibers from the degradation of the poly-mer matrix. In energy sector, carbon fibers are known as good energy storage materials due to adequate con-ducting and capacitive properties as supercapacitor electrodes. In this sense, the purpose of this work is to enable the use of recovered carbon fibers frompyrolysis of carbon fiber epoxy composites as electrode mate-rial for supercapacitors and to evaluate the influence of thermochemical and chemical treatments on their capacitive properties. FEG-MEV images showed that the carbon fibers were practically clean with a mini-mum of residual carbon remaining on the surface. The BET area and FTIR, Raman and cyclic voltammetry analyzes showed that thermochemical and chemical treatments carried out at the FCP did not contribute to improving the charge storage capacity at the electrode/ electrolyte interface. On the contrary, the chemical treatment led to a great reduction on energy storage capacity due to the incorporation of OH and COOH groups. The charge/discharge curves show good cycling and the specific capacitance values for the recycled carbon fiber of 34 Fg-1, power density of 37,6 Wkg-1 and energy density of 4,7 Whkg-1 are within range for applications such as supercapacitor electrodes.