67 replies to this topic

[Ben1445]

So for now, I simply dont understand why "plant based" would be fundamentally different chemistry from "oil based" (since oil is supposed to be just be basically plants/animals that died millions of years ago) ... and so why would "plant based" require much less energy to make the end product if we are starting from basically the same chemicals for the inputs.

My scepticism (in so far as I understand this concept) is that this initiative seems to be an effort to substitute for an oil based product with a product with a reasonably similar make up from a renewable source.

Just in case this is the point of confusion... this is not a similar case to bio/synth/e-fuels which are essentially making a drop-in petrol replacement which is to all intents and purposes the same stuff chemically (bar some insignificant details) which are different only in that they're not fossil derived.  
 
The natural fibre composites (the brown coloured panels in the various thread images) being developed by various companies aren't making carbon fibres from of a plant based source, they're just using plant fibres in various fabric weaves (quite literally things like flax and hemp) instead of carbon fibres. There's nothing particularly new about that, given that you will find early composite components made from layers of linen or cotton sheets set in a phenolic resin used on second world war aircraft or dingy sailing blocks from the same for of era (Tufnol being a famous trade-name, and similar to Bakelite and the Duroplast of Trabant fame)  
 
What's advanced since then is resin/polymer development and, quite critically, the modelling and simulation of how you arrange the lay-up of various fibres to get highly optimised components. That merger of the very simple and thousand of years old methods of turning plant fibres into fabrics together with high-tech composite fibre/fabric lay-up techniques deployed on carbon fibre components means a composite using these easy to grow, harvest and process natural fibres can achieve very comparable performance on thin-shell components to to a carbon fibre equivalent part. 
 
It is fundamentally not quite as good mechanically as a carbon fibre composite, since the natural fibres themselves are not as 'strong' as carbon fibres, and for key structural elements it will still fall short in performance by quite a way. But make a thin-shell components such as front/rear wings, splitters, diffusers, bonnets, body panels etc. out of the stuff and you end up with something that essentially achieves the same thing as a carbon fibre composite, which significantly reduces the carbon footprint compared to the use of carbon fibres and which doesn't shatter into many small sharp fragments when it's involved in an impact. This is arguably quite good, because said parts are the most likely to be damaged on track and replaced race-to-race. 

 

I think that, when used for such applications, the minor deficits in outright mechanical performance to carbon fibre components is outweighed by the reduced environmental impact and favourable behaviour in a crash situation, and can genuinely tip the various relevant trade offs in their favour. 

Edited by Ben1445, 07 August 2022 - 17:25.

[jjcale]

Thank you, man. 

 

That is very interesting..... sounds like something worthy of continuing to work on into the future.

 

How does it compare to CF in terms of the energy input to produce it?     ....... I do appreciate that the tech is at an early stage so that energy component will probably change over time - but I am still interested in what it is like now. ... do you know?

 

 

Also .... I was discussing with another "scientifically ignorant person" (SIP?) the other day and explaining something that I learned relatively late in my life .... carbon is everywhere and in a lot of things. Some of us SIPs talk about carbon like it is a poison but it is actually the foundation of life and many many products. Between carbon and silicon everything natural is made from these with some additives for strength, flexibility etc. Developing metals has been our great innovation these past few thousand years - but then came plastics and we were headed back to carbon! .... I said to my friend that we cant do without oil for the moment not because of energy (as we can go nuclear) but because we need it as a source of carbon (and other organic building blocks) - for plastics and for fertiliser.... I said to my friend that many years from now future humans will look back at us figuring out electricity the way we look back at past humans mastering fire - a very basic step. And that the real challenge will be to synthesise or effectively replace the carbon based building blocks of so much of the organic world around us. 

 

So for me this is an interesting development.... its not a true synthesis but its a decent bit of building on what we are already doing. 

 

I understand that putting the word carbon in the marketing material is a good way to help raise money but i wish they wouldnt lean into the whole "climate"/"carbon" thing - just because it winds me up, personally.... for reasons which we shouldnt derail the thread with.... and they are doing something else, in reality. As you have pointed out, this is not another ethanol.... this might actually be the start of something better. 

 

Thank you very much for your explanation.... as usual informative and interesting.  

[GuilhermeMach]

What's the next level? We soon need to create new superlative words.

Climate disaster, of course, which is where we're heading towards.

[Ben1445]

How does it compare to CF in terms of the energy input to produce it?     ....... I do appreciate that the tech is at an early stage so that energy component will probably change over time - but I am still interested in what it is like now. ... do you know?

 

I guess if you think about it fairly conceptually, the production of carbon fibres involves taking precursor polymer material (often fossil based) through an oxidisation process at 300°C before being heated at 2000°C in an inert gas. Further heat treatments up to 3000°C can then strengthen the carbon filaments to a desired standard.  

 

​Meanwhile, producing a linen sheet of woven flax can done entirely by hand (and has been for thousands of years) to seed and harvest the crop, separate out fibres and weave them on a loom. Obviously it will be more mechanised today for speed and efficiency but the fundamental energy levels of the production method are plainly quite different. 

 

There's a decent enough chart from Bcomp which uses kg CO₂ eq/m^2 as a key metric for a final composite laminate which might give a reasonable idea of the magnitude, but I couldn't tell you how that is specifically broken down into various production processes or what assumptions were made about energy source inputs. 

 

[jjcale]

Again very interesting .... but the existence of a chart headed "Global Warming potential and weight properties of composite laminates  with equivalent flexural stiffness" is part of the reason why I am a sceptic about pretty much every aspect of the AGW thing ... so many grifters at all levels - this chart is so obviously a marketing/fund raising tool that it's not even funny.... does anyone actually think this chart is accurate (or is even genuinely meant to be)?. 

 

I understand that they need funding but c'mon be a little less transparent about it....  

 

On the point that I asked about: thanks again - what I am taking from you [Ben] is that a lot less energy is used to make the CF alternative .... good.... Separate and apart from anything to do with AGW - energy costs resources and time to produce and deliver and should always be saved where possible. I dont see why they need another selling point..... they should keep it simple - and honest.   

 

Thanks again.

[Sterzo]

Why was Pat Symonds pondering alternatives to existing carbon fibre materials? He writes: "Generally, the production of natural fibres is less energy-intensive than that of synthetic fibres and their ease of biodegradability and high calorific value if incinerated leads to good end-of-life outcomes."

 

He wasn't suggesting carbon fibre is a major part of F1's "carbon footprint", just toying with thoughts around the subject as far as I could see. Which is what engineers and scientisits do. And obviously there's merit in examining every activity, in case it leads to more environmentally friendly materials and processes.

Edited by Sterzo, 07 August 2022 - 21:18.

[MikeTekRacing]

Why was Pat Symonds pondering alternatives to existing carbon fibre materials? He writes: "Generally, the production of natural fibres is less energy-intensive than that of synthetic fibres and their ease of biodegradability and high calorific value if incinerated leads to good end-of-life outcomes."

He wasn't suggesting carbon fibre is a major part of F1's "carbon footprint", just toying with thoughts around the subject as far as I could see. Which is what engineers and scientisits do. And obviously there's merit in examining every activity, in case it leads to more environmentally friendly materials and processes.

In the same engineering people cathegorize improvements by their effect.
If they pour effort into making F1’s impact 0.01% better surely there woule be other areas with better use of that time?

Until we don’t know if the impact is 0.01% or 5% it’s hard to say if itms worth exploring.

I’d focus on:
Travel
Travel
Travel
Tyres

Edited by MikeTekRacing, 07 August 2022 - 21:26.

[absinthedude]

Will we see hemp-fibre cars like Henry Ford experimented with almost a century ago?

 

 

 

You mean the car that contained about 10% hemp fibre....but which every hemp-activist claims was 100% hemp?

 

Call me a fence sitter here. I am old enough to remember the doubts over carbon fibre and the predictions that Watson and de Cesaris would be turned into soup in the MP4 chassis in the event of a crash. Obviously those doubts, some made by experts, were wrong and carbon fibre has saved many a life....almost certainly including Watson's that very year at Monza. 

 

So I'm all for people innovating and seeing if something with less environmental impact can do the same or even a better job, compared to carbon fibre. While being sceptical of the hype...

[pdac]

You mean the car that contained about 10% hemp fibre....but which every hemp-activist claims was 100% hemp?

 

Call me a fence sitter here. I am old enough to remember the doubts over carbon fibre and the predictions that Watson and de Cesaris would be turned into soup in the MP4 chassis in the event of a crash. Obviously those doubts, some made by experts, were wrong and carbon fibre has saved many a life....almost certainly including Watson's that very year at Monza. 

 

So I'm all for people innovating and seeing if something with less environmental impact can do the same or even a better job, compared to carbon fibre. While being sceptical of the hype...

 

Yep, I'm confident CF will be a thing of the past when I'm tucking into my insect-based dinner heated using the electricity generated at my local nuclear fusion plant.

[Sterzo]

In the same engineering people cathegorize improvements by their effect.
If they pour effort into making F1’s impact 0.01% better surely there woule be other areas with better use of that time?

Until we don’t know if the impact is 0.01% or 5% it’s hard to say if itms worth exploring.

I’d focus on:
Travel
Travel
Travel
Tyres

So would I. But while I agree the main focus should be on the potential for big changes, I don't see that as an argument against exploring every angle. You don't need an engineer to explore how to reduce travel. Allowing him an hour or two to knock off some thoughts about carbon fibre is quite a good idea.

[Ben1445]

Call me a fence sitter here. I am old enough to remember the doubts over carbon fibre and the predictions that Watson and de Cesaris would be turned into soup in the MP4 chassis in the event of a crash. Obviously those doubts, some made by experts, were wrong and carbon fibre has saved many a life....almost certainly including Watson's that very year at Monza. 

 

So I'm all for people innovating and seeing if something with less environmental impact can do the same or even a better job, compared to carbon fibre. While being sceptical of the hype...

I do want to be clear that I don't think there's any serious suggestion (bar a largely unexpected discovery or breakthrough) that natural fibres could or should replace the use of carbon fibre outright. That would especially be the case for a high-stress and safety-critical motorsport components such as the driver safety cell because that's where you really need the strength. I wouldn't exactly describe there being a reality-defying hype around this, it's pretty niche. 

 

I think the immediate case for non-structural aero and bodywork parts is a pretty good one. Something which performs the same basic job in terms of strength/weight with a reduced environmental impact and which fails without shattering into dangerous shards sounds like an upgrade, hence its gradual adoption in such a role. 

 

In comparison, R&D work on a natural fibre Front Impact Adsorbing Structure (or nose cone crash box in plainer terms) perhaps clearly demonstrates the existing gap to carbon fibre in these more heavy-duty, structural applications. In meeting the FIA standards for such a crash box, the prototype part ends up being 40% heavier than a carbon fibre equivalent. The company release understandably puts that in the best light it can and is optimistic they can improve on it, but in that particular application it is not something that's ready for widespread roll out. Applying that sort of weight gain to a full, structurally-composite racing car isn't really viable. 

 

Of course there's also plenty of potential applications outside of motorsport (and even automotive) which could benefit from development of high-tech natural fibre composites. In the automotive sector more generally, carbon fibre composites are usually reserved for expensive, specialist high performance road cars rather than cheaper, more widely produced ones since despite its weight saving benefits it is still very expensive and difficult to dispose of. If modern natural fibre composites can be used to allow carbon fibre-esque reductions in vehicle energy consumption by the light-weighting of regular plastic or metallic parts in a way which is less environmentally impactful, less problematic to dispose of at end of life and produced for not too high a cost, that could be really quite useful. 

Edited by Ben1445, 08 August 2022 - 10:48.

[spa2000overtake]

The article is by Pat Symonds, and explores the possibility of using natural fibres such as flax instead of the synthetic fibres currently used. The problem is achieving the same strength-per-unit of weight as current fibres. He doesn't see much prospect of highly stressed parts such as suspension being replaced, but maybe other components could be one day. It's all dependent in any case on development of the necessary fibres.

It would be interesting to see flax being used in F1 cars in some time future, but the issue now is achieving the same strenght-per-unit of weight with it. Teams have to find a away to to make more environment friendly cars with suitable parts for development.

[spa2000overtake]

Climate disaster, of course, which is where we're heading towards.

Warmer summers coming ahead, get used to it while you can.

[lamo]

Cutting one race from the already exploading but growing calendar would save a lot more footprint via less travelling

Probably by a factor of a 100 or something. They build at most 100 F1 cars a year, it’s hardly any carbon fibre to begin with. A single none European race has the cars transported in planes and 100,000-300,000 people travelling to the event in cars, planes etc.

[Lazy]

Why not ... its only a theory. ... or has that changed since I last tried to get my head round it?

 

Anyway - dont get triggered ... I am really interested in what you might have to say about this topic.

It's a theory like Relativity is a theory, massively peer reviewed, tested and agreed by the vast majority of scientists.

To be a climate denier is pretty close to being a flat earther.

[Lazy]

The point, that so many seem to miss, is that we can't not do without oil.

This really needs to sink in.

 

 

 

 I said to my friend that we cant do without oil for the moment not because of energy (as we can go nuclear) but because we need it as a source of carbon (and other organic building blocks) - for plastics and for fertiliser.... I said to my friend that many years from now future humans will look back at us figuring out electricity the way we look back at past humans mastering fire - a very basic step. And that the real challenge will be to synthesise or effectively replace the carbon based building blocks of so much of the organic world around us. 

 

 

[absinthedude]

 

 

I think the immediate case for non-structural aero and bodywork parts is a pretty good one. Something which performs the same basic job in terms of strength/weight with a reduced environmental impact and which fails without shattering into dangerous shards sounds like an upgrade, hence its gradual adoption in such a role. 

 

 

 

Which is quite interesting in itself as that's how F1 started using carbon fibre....the Hill GH1 of 1974/75 had carbon fibre wings but most structural experts felt it was unsuitable to build the tub from carbon fibre. 

[Sterzo]

It's a theory like Relativity is a theory, massively peer reviewed, tested and agreed by the vast majority of scientists.

To be a climate denier is pretty close to being a flat earther.

In addition to what you say, I'd add that the science involved is basic, long-established knowledge of the formation and behaviour of gases. Even if we denied that any specific wildfires or flooding were caused by man's activity, we know for certain that we're changing gases and pumping them into the atmosphere in a quantity that would cause climate change.