Albis and Wipag join forces to close the carbon fiber loop

Friedrichshafen, Germany — Just two weeks prior to Fakuma, thermoplastics compounder and distributor Albis Plastics GmbH announced a deal to buy Wipag Deutschland GmbH, a specialist in making carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic compounds for injection molding.

Both companies exhibited at Fakuma. The deal is scheduled to close in January.

Hamburg, Germany-based Albis highlighted environmental benefits for the acquisition: Wipag offers automakers recycled-content materials, they can work with Wipag to recycle scrap carbon fiber from their own manufacturing processes, and the CFRP compounds are lighter and stronger than conventional glass-fiber-reinforced thermoplastics.

Wipag, with sites in Neuburg (Donau) and Gardelegen, Germany, has developed innovative, eco-friendly technologies that allow waste carbon fiber, mainly from the automotive industry, to be reprocessed into CFRP compounds. Wipag also uses post-industrial and post-consumer polypropylene.

Wipag first introduced 40 percent CFRP thermoplastic compounds in 2014. In 2015, it displayed an engine compartment housing molded by Mann+Hummel in a polypropylene compound containing 15 percent recycled carbon fiber.

More recently, Wipag worked with Audi to develop a highly ribbed 30 percent recycled CFRP fuel filler flap hinge arm. Markus Thurmeier, Audi fiber reinforced plastics development engineer, gave details on the development in a 2017 VDI Association of German Engineers' Plastics in Automotive Engineering Congress.

Thurmeier revealed that the carbon fiber comes from dry fabric off-cuts from CFRP parts for Audi group vehicles: various Lamborghini Huracan parts and Audi R8 B-pillars. Wipag then processed and compounded the carbon fiber with polypropylene from Borealis.

The motivation for the project was to reduce the weight of tank filler caps, which are increasing in length in Europe due to added connections such as selective catalytic reduction measures on diesel-powered cars. The CFRP/PP material is 33 percent lighter than the 50 percent glass-fiber-reinforced nylon 6 part that it replaced, and is stiffer for better load bearing.

Other advantages mentioned by Thurmeier were lower coefficient of thermal expansion and practically no humidity absorption — often the Achilles heel for glass-fiber-reinforced nylon.

Röttingen, Germany-based ITW Automotive Products GmbH found processing advantages with WIC PP 30: reduced knit lines and lower melt and injection temperatures when molding prototype flaps for Audi A7 tank flaps.

Although the Audi tank flap arm is still under development, Wipag announced in June that it has been supplying a PP compound in an automotive serial production application for the first time: a load floor support for the BMW 5 sedan. The part uses 10 percent CFRP PP, substituting glass-fiber-reinforced nylon 6. In this case, recycled carbon fiber comes from fabric off-cuts from BMW i3 and i8 cars.

Albis describes these examples as being "closed-loop technology for sustainable recycling management."

Philip Krahn, CEO of Albis Plastic, refers to other examples of Wipag activities as also interesting to Albis, such as industrial and post-consumer PP, with Wipag separating PP from instrument panels or after paint removal from bumpers.

Albis cited the development of a circular economy, saying these are also "highly developed closed-loop processes providing an ideal opportunity for eco-friendly production."

Bernd Sparenberg, Albis vice president of technical compounds, added that Wipag recycled materials provide an excellent platform for Altech Eco PP compounds, expanding the Albis range of "high quality near-to-prime recycling compounds, which are already used in numerous applications for the automotive industry."

Wipag is not alone in developing rCF reinforced thermoplastics applications: polyolefins producer Borealis showed a Skoda fender trial part at the March VDI congress, molded by Magna in a 10 percent recycled CFRP Fibermod PP compound produced by Borealis. And BMW in 2015 introduced a clutch pedal molded in one of a range of iCF recycled CFRP nylon compounds developed by Niederzissen, Germany-based compounder Akro-Plastic GmbH.