A look back at the composites recycling workshop

Around thirty people gathered in La Trinité sur Mer on 10 June to discuss waste management in ocean racing. The morning was punctuated by instructive exchanges between speakers and participants, with exchanges on best practice, the state of the art in recycling and a closer look at the rubbish bins on the race sites. An initiative of Bretagne Développement Innovation, the IMOCA Class and the Les Ptits Doudous team.

Building the Ptits Doudous boat

In 2021, skipper Armel Tripon is launching an innovative project: building an IMOCA using materials no longer used in the aeronautical industry.

Working in partnership with the Airbus Technocentre in Nantes, the skipper is exploring the use of composite components by seeking to reuse carbon fibres that no longer meet the requirements and certifications of the aeronautics industry, but which are nonetheless perfectly suited to shipbuilding. Production was entrusted to the Duqueine Atlantique shipyard, an expert in composite materials, but which until now had never built a boat.

The use of downgraded carbon has proved complex, see the Tip & Shaft article. Armel Tripon’s Imoca is not built 100% in downgraded carbon. Quentin Lucet, naval architect at VPLP Design, confirms the use of “fresh” carbon for certain key parts and reinforcements, with the hull and deck therefore made up of 65% re-used carbon.
 
Armel Tripon is taking the Les P’tits Doudous association, which he has been sponsoring for several years, with him on this circular economy adventure. This association collects and recycles metals used in hospitals, such as scalpel wires and intubation blades. Armel Tripon and Nolwenn Febvre (president of Les P’tits Doudous) realised that the titanium used in hospitals (for screws, prostheses, etc.) was the same as that used in ocean racing for fittings. Several tonnes were therefore collected and an initial experimental ingot weighing 150kg has just been melted down. A first friction ring will soon be machined for testing, to see whether a whole subsidiary of recycled titanium fittings could be launched.

As part of his ongoing efforts to reduce the impact of his future Imoca, his choice of design is based on a mould reused from a sistership of Malizia-Seaexplorer, Boris Herrmann’s VPLP design.

Waste management on site

Pauline Gerardin, Environmental Impact Manager at Les P’tits Doudous, reviews the different stages of waste management on the site.

Stage 1: Storage of all waste, which will not be removed until solutions are found.

Stage 2: Mapping of waste types, with 4 main families identified:

• raw materials
• environmental tissue products
• all consumables
• and finally all packaging.

Stage 3: Identifying all the recycling options available.

On the one hand, there are the traditional recyclers, like Veolia or Paprec, with very interesting solutions for packaging and some other site products, but not enough for other waste.

And on the other, the decision to bring together other players:

• AirTech, , one of the world’s leading manufacturers of environmental fabrics 

To work with carbon, on average 3 different layers of plastic are used. So manufacturing an IMOCA boat generates at least three times its surface area in plastic waste. AirTech has set up specific recycling processes for their production off-cuts, and they have offered to take back products that they sell in order to test these recycling processes on products used by their customer. Airtech contact: Jean Marie Le Hen (jm.lehen@airtech.lu)

• Biotop, a network of eco-companies based in La Rochelle

Biotop is a waste-sharing network. They manage to recycle 72 items of waste by consolidating them and finding outlets for them, which can be of different types: industrial, associations, recyclers, etc. They send them their tarpaulins, which are then recycled.
They send them their tarpaulins, which come from suppliers other than Airtech, and their separators (the polyethylene ones are recycled by Suez and the cellulose wadding ones are processed by Soprema to make insulation.

Carbon is another important issue. There are different varieties and different suppliers, which makes recycling quite complicated. For reasons of logistics and cost, the Ptits Doudous teams have chosen to work with 3 players to recycle carbon:

• Karbon Créations in Quimper, which recovers carbon offcuts to make small goodie-type objects, which are then resold to the Les Ptits Doudous association.
• Apply Carbon in Plouay, for dry fibres
• And let’s not forget the IMOCA class, which has already set up a carbon bin since the end of 2022

Stage 4: The implementation of other recycling actions, such as the old sails, which are redirected to Second Souffle, or the various scraps of metal, which are deposited with the scrap metal dealer Derichebourg, with the profits going to the charity Les P’tits Doudous.

The process on the site

8 bins have been placed at the back of the workshop (in addition to the 4 ‘usual’ bins managed by GLD environnement), with 3 intermediate bins placed under each workstation. All the waste managed specifically by the team is then stored in a container in front of the worksite. This ‘buffer zone’ makes it possible to build up larger stocks and space out the journeys to the various players.

In terms of human resources, all the teams have been mobilised. Pauline Gerardin is in charge of the recycling programme, supported by a quality manager from Duqueine and a trainee who checks the sorting. The operators have also all been trained in this more advanced waste sorting and management process.

And there’s one important point to bear in mind: that the skipper must be committed to recycling. This sorting process is more expensive than conventional management, and it also means extra time for each operator, so it’s important that the skipper embodies the notion of recycling.

Key figures and results

For the hull, deck and bulkheads = 6 T of waste, including

• 1 T cardboard / plastic recycled by Veolia
• 1 T to Air Tech in drain
• 1 T to all other recyclers

This gives a recycling rate of 50%, which is higher than that of the other teams.

Other positive spin-offs include the teams’ and the skipper’s awareness of the weight of the material, the duplication of these actions in other shipyards and the exchange of best practice between peers.

A number of ideas were put forward for improving operations:

• Work on reducing waste well upstream (work on eco-design, purchasing, etc.).
• The issue of pooling and transport
• Regulatory issues (should waste recycling standards be included in class rules?).
• Research and development

FOCUS ON SAILS

Reducing CO² will also involve sails and their eco-design. In Carnac, All Purpose is one of the sailmakers equipping boats in the Vendée Globe, and the sailmaker will be equipping Armel Tripon’s boat with a set of sails made from … nettle fibres.

First linen… 

During the last edition of the VG, skipper Damien Seguin took the start with an All Purpose mainsail incorporating 40% flax fibre in place of petrochemical-based fibres. This integration has led to a 65% reduction in CO₂ equivalent emissions, thanks in particular to the implementation of a circular economy.

But faced with strong speculation on flax (linked to the explosion in global demand), faced with the characteristics of flax fibre which present some disadvantages (it drinks a lot of resin, and it is mostly packaged for use in the textile industry), All Purpose and some partners in the Trilam Bio Tex project initiated in 2023 an experiment around nettle fibre, from cultivation to spinning.

 …then test with nettle

The first trials of nettle sails are underway, opening up a new avenue for diversifying biosourced fibres. An Open 7.50 whose sail contained 65% nettle fibre came 3rd in the last Spi Ouest France race, demonstrating that bio-sourcing and environmental commitment can really be aligned with performance.

Armel Tripon’s boat will also be a test boat for these nettle sails.

With the Trilam BioTex R&D project, the All Purpose sailmaker and its partners Trilam, IRDL and Kaïros are shaking things up by creating biosourced sails that are 100% made in France. TRILAM BIOTEX: eco-designed nautical textiles

FURTHER INFORMATION

Read the Mer Concept and Université de Bretagne Sud presentations (in French !) that closed the workshop.

• The Mer Concept waste recovery guide

• State of the art recycling by Université de Bretagne Sud