The Circular Industries Talks are organized every second Wednesday. In this edition, John-Alan Pascoe (Assistant Professor at TU Delft) discusses the challenges of making aircraft structures circular. From designing for repairability to navigating strict safety regulations, how can the aerospace industry transition towards more sustainable, circular practices? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
As with other industries, the aviation industry needs to transform to a more circular model. However, it also faces some unique challenges, which even affect general rules of thumb that apply in the circularization of other industries. For example, extending lifetime of products and making them easier to disassemble is generally a good way to make them more circular. However, in the aviation industry, the impact of the use phase is so disproportionate that it is nearly always better to reduce weight, even at the cost of a shorter product life or recyclability.
This presentation will explain the physical phenomena leading to these conclusions but also examine where there is potential for making the aviation industry more circular. It will also highlight how and why the aviation industry is already very successful in the repurposing strategy for circularization.
Finally, recycling in the aviation industry will be examined, presenting the barriers to increased recycling of aircraft structures, and showing how recycling can be approached within the existing regulatory framework.
Take aways:
- The use phase is dominant for the environmental impact of aircraft. Reducing manufacturing or materials impact at the cost of a weight increase is almost never worth it from an LCA point of view. Even if we switch to carbon neutral fuels.
- The aviation industry is already extremely good at repurposing. Recycling is much harder.
- The main barriers to recycling of aircraft are economical.
The Circular Industries Talks
The goal of the Circular Industries Talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).