Juno Composites Achieves Milestone with New Carbon Fibre Panel Featuring Bisphenol-Free Epoxy Resin

For almost four years, Juno Composites has been a key partner of VIBES , working alongside leading European institutions and companies to pioneer sustainable composite materials. Today, we are thrilled to announce a major milestone in this collaborative effort: Juno Composites has successfully manufactured a carbon fibre bisphenol-free epoxy resin panel using resin infusion, marking a significant step forward in the development of environmentally friendly composite materials.

As part of the VIBES project, Juno Composites has focused on the development of bio-based composites, utilizing cutting-edge bio-based and recyclable epoxy resins. These advanced materials, combined with lignin-based carbon fibres and natural flax reinforcements, represent a new generation of sustainable composites that align with the project’s goals of reducing environmental impact while maintaining high-performance standards.

The VIBES project has produced novel epoxy resins synthesised by Specific Polymers (France) and flax reinforcement textiles woven by FLIPTS & Dobbels (Belgium). Juno manufactured composite test panels from the constituent materials developed in the VIBES project including; flax reinforcements and bio-based epoxy matrices. We mechanically tested these novel composites with regard to their fibre and resin dominated properties and benchmarked their performance against composites that we manufactured with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) epoxy resin (Sicomin France) and flax textiles (ECO-Techlin).

In addition, Juno has investigated the effects of moisture content in natural flax textiles and their negative impact on the mechanical performance of the final composite. Industrially suitable drying strategies (in the context of composite manufacturing e.g. resin infusion) need to be developed to extract the maximum performance from natural flax fibre textile reinforcements for composites. Where test results indicate the typical ‘as-received’ moisture content of woven flax textiles to be 13-15% on average. Mechanical testing indicated that implementing a more effective drying strategy for the textile flax reinforcements before they are infused with epoxy resin, achieving a moisture content below 1%, will result in higher performance values overall. Furthermore, this work has indicated that to maximise the performance/reduce variability of flax fibre composites and encourage transition to ‘greener’ and more sustainable composites, it is crucial to examine and record the fibre production during scutching, hackling and spinning prior to arrangement into textiles (woven and non-crimp fabrics) in order to fully understand how the performance of the flax textile might be enhanced for production of engineering composite materials as opposed to production of apparel. Presently, there is a lack of basic mechanical and physical properties that are made available from fibre and textile manufacturers of flax fibres and flax textiles to the composite material designers and fabricators. Successful optimisation of the final flax fibre composite requires the engagement of the whole value chain from the scientist’s selecting seeds/strains that promote the most favourable characteristics, farmers growing and harvesting the flax, the fibre processors, the textile manufacturers and the composite materials designers and fabricators.

The results of this comparison demonstrate the potential of the VIBES composites to meet or exceed the performance of traditional composites, while offering significant environmental benefits. The success of this development is a testament to the collaborative effort of all VIBES partners and underscores the importance of innovation in creating sustainable solutions for the future.

This achievement represents a key milestone in the VIBES project and reaffirms Juno Composites’ commitment to advancing the field of bio-based composites.

Stay tuned for more updates as the VIBES project continues to make strides towards a greener, more sustainable future.