Showcasing how chemistry research and innovation is enabling the development of sustainable composites

Chemistry can aid the transition from petrochemicals to bio-derived sources of carbon by:

• developing drop-in bio-derived replacements that match the performance of resins, fibres and other constituents derived from petrochemical feedstocks
• enabling the composites industry to adopt new chemistries made available from bio-derived sources to enhance performance.

As supply chains develop strategies to decarbonise, chemistry can support the composites industry to adopt waste and circular economy approaches to produce more sustainable composites. For example, by:

• maturing chemical recycling techniques for composites and other polymeric materials
• lowering the carbon content of synthetic routes to common composite materials.

As new composites come onto the market, chemistry can contribute to:

• improved chemical recycling techniques linked with materials design concepts (for example, triggered degradation and vitrimers)
• matching key material sets with efficient and high-yielding processing conditions for recycling.

Chemistry can help develop lower temperature cure systems and systems based on non-thermally activated mechanisms.

By harnessing the power of digital and computational chemistry approaches, the composites industry can better design new materials, predict performance, and bring new solutions to market, faster.

All the opportunities explored require broad support from government agencies through a UK advanced materials strategy and funding for chemistry related research for the composites industry.