Environmental friendly recycling of FRP-sandwich ship hulls

Fibre composite material and sandwich structures are used more extensively especially for transporting structures, vehicles and vessels. This group of materials is young compared to the traditional metallic structural materials. Thus, experience for end of life treatment is missing for these new materials. Increasing environmental demands from customers and authorities forces the manufacturers to act. In this study a model for assessing possible disposal techniques is demonstrated for a sandwich hull from the Visby Class Corvette. The model is based on waste properties and conditions set by the processes involved in the different disposal techniques. Six different disposal techniques are investigated, from reuse to landfill. For the studied structure they are all possible to carry out. When considering external factors as market only two of them are possible today, energy recovery by waste incineration and landfill. According to the waste hierarchy set by the authorities for minimising environmental effects these methods are not on top of the list. Hopefully industrially techniques for material recycling will exists when this sandwich hull is actual for disposal.