Environmental Impact Assessment of Thermoplastic Pultrusion of GF-PP Pre-Consolidated Tapes

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Abstract
This work focuses on the pultrusion of pre-consolidated tapes made of virgin polypropylene reinforced with glass fiber. A specially designed laboratory-scale pultrusion line was used, consisting of a heating/forming mold, a cooling mold, and the pulling system. A life cycle assessment was conducted to evaluate the environmental impact of producing a pultruded composite material with a constant cross-section of 100 mm² and a length of one meter. The cradle-to-gate approach was chosen to model the pultrusion process, which involves the three stages mentioned above. The analysis was performed using the CML 2016 method in the LCA for Experts (Sphera) software. The data used in this work to model the cradle-to-gate scenario are mainly derived from experimental measurements taken during the pultrusion process using sensors and from the literature. The specific Energy Consumption (SEC) was calculated for both operational conditions (1.41 MJ/m at v120 to 0.905 MJ/m at v180). Despite the defects found, the samples taken from the pultruded profile showed significant interlaminar shear strength (120 mm/min of 83.7 ± 9.6 MPa compared to 63.5 ± 17.3 MPa at 180 mm/min).

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