CANOE is very involved in the manufacturing of low cost carbon fibers from precursors such as cellulose, lignin or polyethylene.

The objective is to develop economical carbon fibers for use in composite materials in order to lighten structures in the fields of transportation (automotive, …), energy (wind blade, storage, …), sports and leisure , construction, …

As part of the FORCE project, a continuous carbonization pilot line will be installed in 2018 in CANOE facilities in Lacq to produce carbon fibers. This line, ordered in September 2017, is co-funded by the Nouvelle Aquitaine regional board and IRT Jules Verne. It is a versatile carbonization line that can process up to 10 x 12K strands in parallel. Its production capacity is about 1 ton per year with a maximum carbonization temperature of 1150 °C. This open-access line will be able to carbonize precursor fibers which are an alternative to polyacrylonitrile fibers, the reference material used today.
The FORCE project, led by IRT Jules Verne with FAURECIA as main contributor, aims to develop carbon fibers with a tensile strength of 2500 MPa and a Young’s modulus of 250 Gpa, for a price of 8€/ kg to supply the automotive, and sports and leisure markets.
FORCE benefits from the experience of CANOE, ARKEMA and RENAULT, to name a few. All three of them are partners of the CARBOPREC European project which has just ended after 4 years of R&D on extraction of bio-sourced material, spinning of precursor fibers, carbonization of these fibers and their integration in automotive and wind blade composite demonstrators.

Further work in the development of new precursors for carbon fibers is currently in progress, as part of DISTRUC and CAPONE projects.