The paper presents the current volume of international production and global markets of carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, also regarding the potential development trends. Examples were provided on how to effectively recycle carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites. Legally binding legislation in the EU on polymer composite recycling was given.

The paper presents some examples of new technological solutions for the recovery and re-use of recycled carbon fiber in automotive and railway industries, as well as in aviation and wind turbine constructions. The new technologies of fiber recovery that are described can enable the mass-scale use of recycled carbon fiber in the future.

In this work, we verified the possibility of valorizing a major waste product of the potato starch industry, potato tuber juice (PJ). We obtained a cost-effective, ecological-friendly microbiological medium that yielded bacterial cellulose (BC) with properties equivalent to those from conventional commercial Hestrin–Schramm medium. The BC yield from the PJ medium (>4 g/L) was comparable, despite the lack of any pre-treatment. Likewise, the macro- and microstructure, physicochemical parameters, and chemical composition showed no significant differences between PJ and control BC. Importantly, the BC obtained from PJ was not cytotoxic against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro and did not contain any hard-to-remove impurities. The PJ-BC soaked with antiseptic exerted a similar antimicrobial effect against Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as to BC obtained in the conventional medium and supplemented with antiseptic. These are very important aspects from an application standpoint, particularly in biomedicine. Therefore, we conclude that using PJ for BC biosynthesis is a path toward significant valorization of an environmentally problematic waste product of the starch industry, but also toward a significant drop in BC production costs, enabling wider application of this biopolymer in biomedicine.

A series of poly(hexamethylene 2,5-furanodicarboxylate)-block-poly(tetrahydrofuran) (PHF-b-F-pTHF) copolymers were synthesized using a two-stage procedure, employing transesterification and polycondensation. The content of pTHF flexible segments varied from 25 to 75 wt.%. ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses were applied to confirm the molecular structure of the materials. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical measurements (DMTA), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) allowed characterizing the supramolecular structure of the synthesized copolymers. SEM analysis was applied to show the differences in the block copolymers’ morphologies concerning their chemical structure. The influence of the number of flexible segments in the copolymers on the phase transition temperatures, thermal properties, as well as the thermo-oxidative and thermal stability was analyzed. TGA analysis, along with tensile tests (static and cyclic), confirmed the utilitarian performance of the synthesized bio-based materials. It was found that an increase in the amount of pTHF caused the increase of both number-average and weight-average molecular weights and intrinsic viscosities, and at the same time causing the shift of the values of phase transition temperatures toward lower ones. Besides, PHF-b-F-pTHF containing 75 wt.% of F-pTHF units was proved to be a promising thermoplastic shape memory polymer (SMP) with a switching temperature of 20 °C.

The unique properties of bacterial cellulose (BC) make it of great interest for numerous branches of industry. Nevertheless, the high cost of the dedicated, microbiological medium used for BC production significantly hinders possibility of widespread use. Searching for an alternative, we turned our attention to potato tuber juice (PJ), a major waste product of the potato starch industry. We verified the possibility of using PJ as a cost-effective, ecological-friendly medium that yielded BC with properties equivalent to those from conventional commercial Hestrin-Schramm medium. The BC yield from PJ medium (>4 g/L) was comparable, despite the lack of any pre-treatment. Likewise, the macro- and microstructure, physicochemical parameters, and chemical composition showed no significant differences between PJ and control BC. Importantly, BC obtained from PJ was not cytotoxic against fibroblast cell line L929 in vitro and did not contain any hard-to-remove impurities. These are very important aspects from an application standpoint, particularly in biomedicine. Therefore, we conclude that using PJ for BC biosynthesis is a path towards significant valorization of an environmentally problematic waste product of the starch industry and can help ultimately lower BC production costs. Highlights Potato juice (PJ) was used as a culture medium for cellulose-synthesizing bacteria. PJ was suitable as source of nutrients and did not required any pre-treatment. Yield of BC from PJ was equivalent to that obtained from conventional HS. PJ-BC did not differ from conventionally produced HS-BC in terms of its properties. PJ-BC can be used in the same applications as commercially produced BC.

This paper proposes and experimentally investigates a novel nondestructive testing method for ferromagnetic elements monitoring, the Magnetic Recording Method (MRM). In this method, the inspected element must be magnetized in a strictly defined manner before operation. This can be achieved using an array of permanent magnets arranged to produce a quasi-sinusoidal magnetization path. The magnetic field caused by the original residual magnetization of the element is measured and stored for future reference. After the operation or loading, the magnetic field measurement is repeated. Analysis of relative changes in the magnetic field (for selected components) allows identifying applied stress. The proposed research methodology aims to provide information on the steel structure condition unambiguously and accurately. An interpretation of the results without referring to the original magnetization is also possible but could be less accurate. The method can be used as a standard technique for NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) or in structural health monitoring (SHM) systems.