The Fossil, the Green and the in-Between: Life Cycle Assessment of Manufacturing Composites with Varying Bio-Based Content

Bio-based composites offer potential environmental benefits over fossil-based materials, but limited research exists on manufacturing processes with varying material combinations. This study performs a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment of five composite types to evaluate the role of fully and partially bio-based composites, focusing on the manufacturing stage. The composite materials include glass or flax fiber-based reinforcements embedded in polymer matrices based on a fossil epoxy, a partially bio-based epoxy or epoxidized linseed oil, fabricated using vacuum-assisted resin infusion. Flax fibers in a partially bio-based epoxy achieve lowest environmental impacts in most categories when assessed at equal geometry. Glass fiber composites exhibit higher fiber volume content and material properties, and thus, demonstrate competitive environmental performance at equal absolute and normalized tensile strength. Composites using epoxidized linseed oil are least advantageous with the manufacturing stage contributing a majority of environmental impacts due to comparatively long curing times. These results are based on methodological choices and technical constraints, which are discussed together with benchmarking against previous studies. While partially bio-based materials can provide a middle-ground for enhancing composite environmental performance, further optimization of bio-based material functionality regarding material properties and processability is pivotal to exploit the full potential of bio-based composites.