Open Access

Denny Schüppel, Florian Halter, T. Schneider, Lars Wietschel, Andrea Thorenz, Alex Tuma, Dietmar Koch

• In recent decades, the development efforts on ceramic composites (CMC) have focused mainly on improving the mechanical, chemical and thermal properties as well as on optimizing cost-effective production routes. Recently, more and more application areas for CMC have opened up outside of aerospace engineering, where environmental impacts and emissions are also relevant. These impacts have hardly been studied so far but are attracting growing interest due to the increasing awareness of environmental impacts. The project team of the CU EcoCeramic [1] joint research project is now focussing on these questions using C/C (carbon fiber reinforced carbon) as a generic example to show what the environmental footprint of C/C manufacturing looks like along the chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) route. On the one hand, the key performance indicators (KPI) are considered. Secondly, realistic future scenarios are calculated, such as the use of regenerative process energy or the further developmentIn recent decades, the development efforts on ceramic composites (CMC) have focused mainly on improving the mechanical, chemical and thermal properties as well as on optimizing cost-effective production routes. Recently, more and more application areas for CMC have opened up outside of aerospace engineering, where environmental impacts and emissions are also relevant. These impacts have hardly been studied so far but are attracting growing interest due to the increasing awareness of environmental impacts. The project team of the CU EcoCeramic [1] joint research project is now focussing on these questions using C/C (carbon fiber reinforced carbon) as a generic example to show what the environmental footprint of C/C manufacturing looks like along the chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) route. On the one hand, the key performance indicators (KPI) are considered. Secondly, realistic future scenarios are calculated, such as the use of regenerative process energy or the further development of manufacturing technology. Finally, current approaches and ideas are discussed as to what a holistic regenerative approach to C/C using CVI might look like when biobased carbon fibers and green process gases are used. The environmental impact will be determined by a life cycle assessment (LCA) using SimaPro software and interpreted in comparison with properties of C/C.…