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“I believe r-LightBioCom will help support a more sustainable industry.”

r-LightBioCom - Technical Coordinator Eduardo Fages Santana

In the EU-funded r-LightBioCom project, 15 multidisciplinary partners from research, automotive, aeronautics and construction sectors across Europe work together to develop and apply advanced bio-based lightweight high-performance composites (HPC) with significantly reduced environmental impacts throughout their entire life cycle. The project also provides technologies and tools for the sustainable design, modelling and processing of these HPC materials.

 

We interviewed Eduardo Fages Santana, Technical Coordinator of the r-LightBioCom project and Head of the Sustainability and Material Technologies Research and Development Group at AITEX, about AITEX’s motivation in becoming the coordinator of r-LightBioCom and the values he sees in the project.

 

Q: What excited you most when you first pictured the r-LightBioCom project?

 

A: r-LightBioCom is addressing a pressing problem by employing a realistic strategy. Despite the high difficulty of achieving the technical objectives, the r-LightBioCom consortium is capable to reach them by combining different technologies and expertise. For instance, in some use-case scenarios, we are expecting the total amount of recycled content of the composites to increase up to 50% by weight.

In addition, we want to guarantee the recyclability of these new composites and to reduce the carbon footprint in their manufacturing stage. It is clear from my side that this initiative has the potential to propose an innovative and reliable circular model for the composite industry and related sectors that are consuming these kinds of technical products.

Q: What is AITEX’s role in r-LightBioCom, and what special competences and experience does AITEX bring into this project?

 

A: AITEX is the technical coordinator of this interesting and promising R&D project. With more than 35 years of experience, we bring our extensive expertise in the field of natural and recycled fibre technologies as well as the processing of recycled fibres into HPC intermediates and components to this project.

 

Moreover, we are collaborating with the project consortium in activities related to the manufacturing of sustainable textile reinforcements for the composite industry. AITEX thrives to obtain high quality recycled fibres and textiles derived from these fibres. Intermediate products and components (e.g. fabrics, non-wovens and honeycombs) are being developed and validated for the automotive, aeronautics and construction use-cases considered in this project. It is important to say that these recycled fibres and textiles will be used in combination with sustainable resins and optimized procedures. Consequently, the project is considering different strategies to reduce the environmental impact related to composite materials.

Q: What would you say is r-LightBioCom’s main added value?

 

A: It is perhaps the possibility to combine a huge variety of synergistic technologies to face a very complex problem, namely “how to make the composites industry more sustainable”. New technologies for bio-based recyclable resins, significant advances in technical textiles recovery as well as cost-and-energy-efficient manufacturing techniques are the main objectives of the r-LightBioCom project.

 

On top of that, cooperation among R&D centres and industry partners allows us to demonstrate that the technologies researched will be ready for scale-up at the end of this initiative. In the end, future implementation and replication must be fully guaranteed.

Q: How do you think r-LightBioCom will contribute to a more sustainable Europe and to the well-being of its citizens?

 

A: I expect the project to generate the knowledge required to help the composite industry and related sectors (automotive, aeronautics and construction) to be more sustainable. I believe r-LightBioCom will help support a more sustainable industry and create new job opportunities in every step of the value chain considered in this project. For instance, formulation of bio-based and recyclable resins and additives, technical textiles recycling, sustainable composites production, etc.

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