Discontinuous low-cost carbon fiber/bamboo fiber hybrid intermediates for lightweighting Vehicle Applications

Carbon fiber is fast replacing metal in products used in auto vehicles, aerospace, defense, sports, wind turbines, and other industries primarily due to its strength to lightweight. However, carbon fiber is expensive, energy intensive, brittle, and wasteful. Creating a hybrid bamboo/carbon fiber material should reduce cost, weight, energy use, and waste, while improving reformability, recyclability, and environmental carbon sequestration. Resource Fiber LLC is the only fully integrated bamboo company in the U.S. growing bamboo commercially and driving domestic bamboo product manufacturing. Growing operations are in southwestern Alabama, an area selected for its exceptional growing conditions, and with manufacturing in Tennessee, a cost-competitive locale. Bamboo is a rapidly renewable plant with exceptional mechanical properties that efficiently sequesters carbon. It is widely used in hundreds of products - the majority imported from China. Certain bamboo species, when engineered and manufactured into products correctly, can replicate the characteristics of old growth wood. This results in higher quality products, greater durability and stability, and a longer product life than many wood products currently on the market. This project will develop and test the mechanical properties of a bamboo/carbon fiber material that replaces at least 50% of carbon fiber in a product allowing it distinct and unique mechanical properties superior to carbon fiber, e.g. re-formable. The benefits of using bamboo in this work is that it offsets some of the limitations of carbon fiber such as; (a) High cost of carbon fiber; bamboo is 1/5th the cost of carbon fiber; (b) High-use of energy in supply chain and manufacturing (230 MJ/kg to produce carbon fiber, while only 9.55 MJ/kg to produce bamboo fibers); (c) Carbon fiber is brittle and has low impact resistance, while bamboo has high energy absorption capacity; (d) Underutilized capacity at existing carbon fiber facilities; (e) Bamboo offers green solutions; and (f) High cost of recycling carbon fiber; while recycling and biodegradability of bamboo fibers is a distinct advantage. The project also collaborates with the Fibers and Composites Manufacturing Facility (FCMF) at the University of Tennessee (UT) and the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) through UT. The intermediates produced with bamboo/carbon in the form of wet laid mats, tapes, stitch bonded and pellets – will be converted to prototype part designs through the extensive molding experience at UT/IACMI. Processes such as extrusion- compression, injection molding, twin screw compounding, compression stamping, roll forming, pultrusion and resin transfer molding are representative examples of the types of processes used to convert the intermediates to shapes/parts.