ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Leonardo and Hera will collaborate to find ways to recover carbon fiber contained in the composite materials used in constructing aircraft, the aerospace group and the regional utility said on Tuesday.
The deal has strategic value given Europe has almost no virgin carbon fiber production. Developing supply chains to generate "valuable resources locally will help support the process of industrial self-sufficiency," the joint statement said.
The two groups will use a plant Hera is building in the central Emilia-Romagna regional and methods developed in Leonardo's laboratories to recycle the material, as a first step towards full-scale industrial activities to recover carbon fiber in the aerospace sector.
Leonardo's aerospace division will supply the Hera unit Herambiente with fiber waste from manufacturing aircraft components such as stabilisers, fuselage and plane tails.
Herambiente will use pyro-gasification – a procedure that involves heating waste to a high temperature to produce biogas – to generate fiber that can be used as new.