Centexbel hosts HELACS M18 general assembly in Kortrijk

HELACS faces the ending of its second year by accomplishing an important milestone: the celebration of its first onsite General Assembly, framed in Month 18 of project lifetime. Centexbel hosted the meeting and received the visit of the Consortium members to its facilities in Kortrijk (Belgium). HELACS experimented an intense and enriching working day, in which each partner presented to the Consortium and Topic Manager (AIRBUS) own project progress under their correspondent leading tasks.

In that context, HELACS made an overview of the acctions achieved along this period of execution, in terms of managment, dissemination, and technical stages such as the carbon composites posibilities within the large-scale composite structures recycling process, and the developments made regarding the dismantling technologies. PLATA, AITIIP, Centexbel and Gen 2 Carbon offered a detailed report, with the aim of establishing a precise roadmap of the incoming strategies to be exploited during the last year of the project.

After the lectures panel, the Consortium had the opportunity of visiting Centexbel facilities, and learn about Centexbel team’s work, equipment and technological capabilities.

Latest News HELACS

  • For aircrafts that are no longer in service, the owner considers the trade-off between direct resale and disassemble & recycled. Besides that, HELACS project (Holistic processes for the cost-effective and sustainable management of End of Life of Aircraft Composite Structures) is focused on the study of the second one of these options.

  • AITIIP Technology Centre leads HELACS, a European project which aims to develop a dual methodology of controlled comprehensive dismantling in order to make possible the classification, recycling and reuse of aircraft parts made of thermoset and thermoplastic composites that have reached their end of life. Annually, the aeronautical industry is depositing more than 40,000 tons of end-of-life composite material waste in landfills. Thanks to the recovery of materials, the technology proposed by HELACS will benefit the change towards an energy efficiency model.

  • You can now download the official HELACS project brochure. A project comes to transform the dismantling process of the aircraft of the future. HELACS employs novel robotics to recycle composite materials of large components. The HELACS process is based on the application of high water pressure that will selectively chop the thermoset parts into a dimension suitable for recycling. In addition, the pyrolysis process is used for the carbonization of the thermoset matrix to reuse the carbon fibers that overcome this chemical decomposition.

This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 101007871
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