Environmental and Economic Assessment of a Chemically Recyclable Multifunctional CFs-Reinforced Epoxy Laminate with Integrated Photovoltaic Cell

This study evaluates the environmental and economic implications of manufacturing and chemically recycling a multifunctional carbon fiber (CF) epoxy laminate with an integrated crystalline-silicon photovoltaic (PV) cell. Primary material, energy, and waste data were collected during laboratory-scale manufacture and selective acid-mediated disassembly. A preliminary contribution analysis identified the photovoltaic cell and CF fabric as the dominant manufacturing hotspots, jointly accounting for approximately 85% of both climate change and fossil resource impacts. These findings guided a comparative cradle-to-gate life-cycle assessment of two multifunctionally equivalent laminates: a virgin-material system vs. a recycled-content system using recovered CFs and a PV cell. The recycled-content system reduced the considered environmental impacts by 55.9–98.2%, including a 57.6% reduction in climate change. A conservative component-level bounding analysis showed lower impacts for the recovered components across all EF 3.1 categories, with reductions ranging from 26.0% to 99.3% for the CF fabrics and from 47.0% to approximately 99.9% for the PV cell. The life-cycle costing model estimated a 28.0% cost reduction from EUR 10.17 to EUR 7.32 per multifunctional unit. Supplying 50% of process electricity from photovoltaics produced an additional 31% reduction in climate change impact. The results establish a primary-data case for integrating multifunctional-component recovery into composite circularity assessments while identifying laboratory scale and assumed multifunctional equivalence as the main limitations.