A complete review of the different techniques that have been developed to recycle fibre reinforced polymers is presented. The review also focuses on the reuse of valuable products recovered by different techniques, in particular the way that fibres have been reincorporated into new materials or applications and the main technological issues encountered. Recycled glass fibres can replace small amounts of virgin fibres in products but not at high enough concentrations to make their recycling economically and environmentally viable, if for example, thermolysis or solvolysis is used. Reclaimed carbon fibres from high-technology applications cannot be reincorporated in the same applications from which they were recovered, so new appropriate applications have to be developed in order to reuse the fibres. Materials incorporating recycled fibres exhibit specific mechanical properties because of the particular characteristics imparted by the fibres. The development of specific standards is therefore necessary, as well as efforts in the development of solutions that enable reusers to benefit from their reinforcement potential. The recovery and reuse of valuable products from resins are also considered, but also the development of recyclable thermoset resins. Finally, the economic and environmental aspects of recycling composite materials, based on Life Cycle Assessment, are discussed

With World oil demand increasing in the face of limited supplies, increasing attention is turning towards non-conventional oil sources as a means to relieve the pressure exerted on conventional stocks. However, non-conventional oils are hard to extract, process and transport. Several technologies are already at work with differing levels of success, recovery ranging from as low as 5% through to more than 70%. This paper reviews the range of Enhanced Oil Recovery techniques, broadly classified into either thermal or non-thermal methods, and their applicability to the extraction of heavy oils and bitumens. Advantages and disadvantages are presented in terms of their recovery factors, requirements, limitations and economics. The potential benefits of additional downhole catalytic upgrading of heavy oils are also explored.

Composite materials made of glass and carbon fibres have revolutionised many industries. Demand for composites is experiencing rapid growth and global demand is expected to double. As demand for composites grows it is clear that waste management will become an important issue for businesses. Technically composite materials evoke difficult recycling challenges due to the heterogeneity of their composition. As current waste management practices in composites are dominated by landfilling, governments and businesses themselves foresee that this will need to change in the future. The recycling of composites will play a vital role in the future especially for the aerospace, automotive, construction and marine sectors. These industries will require different recycling options for their products based on compliance with current legislation, the business model as well as cost effectiveness. In order to be able to evaluate waste management strategies for composites, a review of recycling technologies has been conducted based on technology readiness levels and waste management hierarchy. This paper analyses 56 research projects to identify growing trends in composite recycling technologies with pyrolysis, solvolysis and mechanical grinding as the most prominent technologies. These recycling technologies attained high scores on the waste management hierarchy (either recycling or reuse applications) suggesting potential development as future viable alternatives to composite landfilling. The research concluded that recycling as a waste management strategy is most popular exploration area. It was found mechanical grinding to be most mature for glass fibre applications while pyrolysis has been most mature in the context of carbon fibre. The paper also highlights the need to understand the use of reclaimed material as important assessment element of recycling efforts. This paper contributes to the widening and systematising knowledge on maturity and understanding composites recycling technologies

Steam gasification of biochars has emerged as a promising method for generating syngas that is rich in hydrogen. In this study four biochars formed via intermediate pyrolysis (wood pellet, sewage sludge, rapeseed and miscanthus) were gasified in a quartz tubular reactor using steam. The dynamic behaviour of the process and effects of temperature, steam flow and particle size were studied. The results show that increases in both steam flow and temperature significantly increase the dry gas yield and carbon conversion, but hydrogen volume fraction decreases at higher temperatures whilst particle size has little effect on gaseous composition. The highest volume fraction of hydrogen, 58.7%, was obtained at 750 °C from the rapeseed biochar

Discontinuous carbon fibre tows were recovered after solvolysis of an aeronautic type composite made with RTM6 epoxy resin. A Sohxlet extraction method was used to quantify the organic residue on the fibre tows and showed that less than 3 wt% was remaining on the surface. The recovered tows were therefore reused directly to manufacture a plate with randomly distributed carbon fibres and then three plates with realigned carbon fibres. The latter were then characterised and tested and the results obtained were compared to the material manufactured using the same type of virgin fibres by the same method. The materials made from recycled carbon fibres showed very good properties in comparison to the virgin fibre material, despite the presence of flaws such as quality of the fibre surface after solvolysis, alignment and voids). This is the first time in the open literature that carbon fibres recovered from solvolysis were reused in this way together with characterisation of the resulting materials

Suzuki cross-coupling reactions are effected in both conventional organic solvents, under continuous flow conditions at 70 °C, and in batch mode in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂), at temperatures as low as 40 °C in the presence of palladium(II) acetate microencapsulated in polyurea [PdEnCat]^™ and tetra-n-butylammonium salts.