Life cycle assessment of natural fibers recovery techniques: A comparison between mechanical and chemical procedures

In this research, two recovery procedures (mechanical and chemical) of a bio-based composite were compared in terms of mechanical performance and life cycle analysis (LCA). The results of tensile and flexural tests highlighted the performance of the secondary composites not inferior to those of the starting composite and, even, a significant improvement of the same for the new composite products obtained with the chemical recovery procedure. From a sustainable perspective, the LCA comparison of the two recovery processes, chemical and mechanical one, highlighted that the chemical procedure is more sustainable than the mechanical one. In fact, chemical recycling led to a reduction up to 83.1% in terms of environmental impact categories. The promising results of this work, both deriving from mechanical tests and LCA, encourage researchers to deeply understand the evolution of the polymer and fibers investigated in this work.