Our History

Carbon Fiber Recycling’s foundation culminated from operating a dumpster rental business and the quest to find recycling avenues for everything placed into those dumpsters to increase profits by decreasing tipping fees and creating a competitive niche. After setting up programs to recycle easier things like scrap metals and wood wastes, the more difficult items like roofing and plastics became a focus. Carbon Fiber Recycling came to be from the culmination of experience in experimenting with pyrolytic processes starting roughly in 2012. After conducting experiments converting plastics to oil and developing the only pyrolytic process to recycle roofing shingles, it was found recycling carbon fiber could be economically performed if done through a continuous flow process.

Two pilot reactor systems were made at the dumpster business in Bethel Connecticut, and in spare time, the science and mechanical aspects were developed. This allowed lab-based testing to prove out the systems, and became the foundation in which a commercial scale system was built. The commercial system was built in Tazewell Tennessee and commissioning of that system proved challenging due to interesting scaling issues. After a year and a half period of construction and commissioning, the commercial system has come to life almost 10 years after the first experiments started.