Oxford Advanced Surfaces has been awarded a £233,000 grant by Innovate UK to develop surface treatments that can be used to create new lightweight composites from recycled carbon fibre.
The grant supports the Integrated Delivery Programme 12 (IDP12) initiative and OAS has won backing in the ‘light weighting’ category that supports feasibility studies into how the weight of vehicles, and therefore CO2 emissions can be appreciably reduced.
Together with the University of Manchester, OAS will use carbon fibre that has been reclaimed from a variety of waste sources during its feasibility study and the Oxfordshire-based company is confident it can deliver a new composite specification that will bring significant benefits to the automotive industry.
The company has 18 months to complete its ‘rescued carbon fibre for use in the automotive industry’ study. It aims to develop data sheets and prototypes that will highlight uses for the new composite material it will develop.