Carbon Fiber Knowledge
The latest from the world of advanced composites and carbon fiber technology.
Wind turbine blades are the largest composite structures in serial production, and for three decades they have shared one inconvenient trait: the thermoset resin that gives them their stiffness cannot be re-melted or re-formed. When a blade reaches end of life, its 15-25 tonnes of glass
Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is entering its end-of-life wave. The first generation of large wind turbine blades, aircraft components, and automotive parts is being decommissioned, and the industry faces a hard question: what happens to the fiber after the part is gone? The an
Hydrogen is rarely consumed where it is produced. Electrolysis plants, ammonia facilities, and industrial clusters sit far from the ports, factories, and refueling stations that need the gas, and moving hydrogen economically over distance has been a persistent bottleneck for the industr
Commercial shipping accounts for roughly three percent of global CO2 emissions, and the International Maritime Organization's decarbonization targets have pushed the industry to test every viable option — alternative fuels, hull optimization, and a return to a technology that predates e
The Western carbon fiber industry is going through its most significant restructuring in a decade. The trigger is well documented in the ATA 2025 annual market report: Chinese operational capacity reached 171,080 tonnes — 52.5% of the global total — and Jilin Chemical Fiber overtook Tor
Every year, ATA CFT Guangzhou Co. Ltd. publishes the most widely cited annual assessment of the global carbon fiber market. The 2025 edition, released in mid-2026 by general manager Lin Gang, documents a year of record volume and a structural shift in supply. Global carbon fiber demand
For two decades, the tensile-strength ceiling of commercial carbon fiber climbed in slow, deliberate steps: T300, T700, T800, and in 2019 T1100. Each new rung expanded the range of structures that could be built with polymer composites, and each was reached first by a small group of Jap
T1100-grade carbon fiber sits at the top of the commercial strength range: fibers with tensile strength in the 6,500-7,000 MPa band have historically been supplied by a very small number of producers, and global volume has been modest. On August 4, 2026, Sinofibers announced that it had
Type IV cylinders — fully composite pressure vessels with a polymer liner and a carbon fiber overwrap — are the storage technology of choice for hydrogen fuel-cell trucks, buses, and station cascades. Their defining advantage is weight: a Type IV vessel can be 40 to 70 percent lighter t