The National Composites Centre is delighted to announce that it has secured funding from the Department of Science Innovation and Technology’s Research and Innovation Organisations Infrastructure Fund to build precursor and carbonisation lines to enable innovation in carbon fibre production. Cygnet Texkimp (Northwich, UK) will design and build the research lines, utilising their world class expertise in carbon fibre production machinery.
The carbon fibre production research lines will be the first of their kind in the UK and the capability will enable innovation in carbon fibre production in an open-access environment for all parts of the supply chain to benefit from. From chemical suppliers to researchers, manufacturers and OEMs.
The new equipment will be capable of producing both precursor and carbon fibre tows, at industrial scale filament counts, in continuous processes at volumes sufficient for small scale composite manufacturing and testing. The ability to test new ideas at this scale is a key step in the development of new feedstocks and processes before they can be scaled up to pilot production volumes. The lines, modular in design, will help to accelerate the development of novel new fibres designed for application, produced from more sustainable feedstocks and with improved process efficiency and control.
A key challenge in carbon fibre production is high energy consumption and the use of fossil-fuel based chemicals which results in a high embodied energy of the material, that results in high environmental impact of manufactured parts. Utilising UK green energy automatically reduces the carbon burden compared to material bought in from across the globe and the ability to trial more sustainable feedstocks is an exciting prospect.
Richard Oldfield CEO of the National Composites Centre said: “We’d like to thank DSIT for supporting this national asset that shows NCC’s strategic commitment to continue to explore and invest in building new capabilities in areas where we can deliver impact and unlock future investments. We will collaborate with academia, RTOs, government and industry to maximise the impact of this hugely strategic technology for the composites materials and manufacturing industry”
Luke Vardy CEO of Cygnet Texkimp added “Working with the NCC on this exciting and strategically important project enables us to extract decades of knowledge from within our business – shared by colleagues and partners who are among the world’s most respected authorities in carbon fibre engineering – and put it to greatest use in a live project that will directly benefit the UK and the organisations looking to bring this technology to market.”
NCC and Cygnet Texkimp working together over the next 12 months to design, build, test and commission the equipment to be ready for operation.