Air Transport

Boeing wants to collaborate with its chief rival to develop technologies for recycling aircraft materials, according to its programme manager of airplane and composite recycling Bill Carberry.

Speaking at a briefing arranged by the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA), of which Boeing is a member, Carberry confirmed that the US airframer had approached Airbus to co-operate on a project aimed at finding profitable ways to recycle low-value materials. "We're waiting for their response," he says.

Boeing's proposal follows on from an agreement signed at the third Aviation & Environment Summit, held in Geneva in 2008, under which the airframers pledged to work more closely on environmental matters.

AFRA has set a target of raise the proportion of aircraft material that can be recycled from its current level of around 70-95% by 2016. Carberry stresses the importance of progress in the area of aircraft interiors.

"Interiors make up about 30% of the weight," he says. "Very, very little of the interior is recycled." This, he continues, is due to the low value of glassfibre materials deployed in this part of the aircraft.

Toward the goal of finding viable methods to recycle such material, Boeing is pursuing a project with Bartin Aero Recycling and Veolia Environmental Services, alongside its approach to Airbus.

The outcome of another research project involving Boeing and AFRA partners was revealed when Carberry presented a proof-of-concept arm rest manufactured using carbonfibre material recycled from the first 787 pre-production fuselage section.

The part was produced after the section was scrapped by two US companies - Huron Valley Fritz West and Schnitzer Steel - and its carbonfibres recovered by four other AFRA partners: UK-based Milled Carbon and the University of Nottingham, and US-based Materials Innovation Technology and Adherent Technologies.

Boeing meanwhile "continues to work" on a new composite recycling operation in Italy, a collaboration with Alenia Aeronautica. Until the technologies have been developed, Alenia's 787 manufacturing scrap is being sent to the Mill Carbon for recycling, as a "stop-gap measure".

In three years of operation AFRA has grown its membership from 11 companies to 40. Its goal is 100 members within another three years. The association estimates that 50% of the world's "legitimately parked" fleet is stored by AFRA-affiliated air centres, and that in 2008 its members reclaimed 197,000t aircraft aluminium and 3,360t of other high-grade aircraft alloys, in addition to returning 544t of used parts to service.