LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Carbon fiber composites are light, strong, and effectively immortal: once the fibers are set in resin, the two cannot be separated, which is why aircraft parts, racing bicycles, and wind turbine blades end their lives in landfills or cement kilns. On Thursday, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne reported a resin that lets go.
The material, described in a materials science journal, is a vitrimer, a class of polymer whose chemical bonds can rearrange under the right conditions. Cured, it behaves like a conventional epoxy and passed the same mechanical tests. Heated to 160 degrees Celsius in a mild, recoverable solvent, it dissolves in about three hours, leaving the carbon fibers clean and, in the team’s measurements, retaining 96 percent of their original strength.
“The fibers are the expensive part. They cost 20 euros a kilogram and take an enormous amount of energy to make,” said Anne-Laure Girard, the professor of polymer chemistry who led the work. “The resin is cheap. We have spent 50 years throwing away the expensive part to save the cheap part, because we could not get them apart. Now we can.”
Europe produces about 40,000 metric tons of composite waste a year, a figure expected to triple by 2035 as the first large generation of wind turbines reaches the end of its 25-year life. Industry estimates put the number of blades to be retired in Europe by 2030 at 14,000, each up to 80 meters long. Several countries have banned landfilling them, and most are currently ground up and burned in cement plants, which recovers energy but destroys the fibers.
The Lausanne group tested its resin on a 1.5-meter section of blade built to industry specifications and recovered the fiber mats intact. Matteo Colombo, a postdoctoral researcher on the project, said the recovered fibers had been used to build a second panel that performed within 5 percent of the first. “Not quite a closed loop,” he said. “But a loop with a very small leak.”
Outside researchers were encouraged but cautious. Jens Albrecht, who studies composite recycling at a Fraunhofer institute in Germany, noted that vitrimers had been demonstrated in laboratories for a decade and that the challenge was cost and certification. “An aircraft part is qualified over years. A blade over months,” he said. “This resin will go into bicycles and sailboats first, and that is fine. The blades will follow when the landfill bans bite.”
Professor Girard said two wind turbine manufacturers had requested samples. She was reluctant to name a timeline. “Chemistry is fast,” she said. “Industry is not, and it is right not to be.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 12 of the European edition with the headline: Swiss Researchers Make a Carbon-Fiber Composite That Can Be Taken Apart.
