KNOW WHY CARBON FIBER IS EXPENSIVE !!

Stronger than steel and a fraction of the weight, carbon fiber is a brilliant invention. Since its first use as a motor case on space rockets in the 1960s, it's often proclaimed as the ticket to better performance. It costs enough that it better. Despite 50 years of advancements carbon fibre remains expensively high end. But 50 years later, carbon fiber is still rare and expensive (starting at $10/pound.The rate of steel is $0.38/pound.)

FEW FACTS ABOUT CARBON FIBER:

1.)Carbon fiber -- sometimes known as graphite fiber -- is a strong, stiff, lightweight material that has the potential to replace steel and is popularly used in specialized, high-performance products like aircrafts, racecars and sporting equipment.

2.)The next generation of carbon-fiber composites could reduce passenger car weight by 50 percent and improve fuel efficiency by about 35 percent without compromising performance or safety.

3.)Carbon fiber can be woven into a fabric that is suitable for use in defense applications or added to a resin and molded into preformed pieces, such as vehicle components or wind turbine blades.

WHY CARBON FIBER IS EXPENSIVE: 

The main reason for high cost of carbon fiber is its manufacturing process.Let us see how it is made and what makes it expensive.

Before carbon fiber becomes carbon fiber, it starts as a base material—usually an organic polymer with carbon atoms binding together long strings of molecules called a polyacrylonitrile(similar to the acrylics in sweaters and carpets).To get the carbon part of carbon fiber, half of the starting material's acrylic needs to be removed. "The final product will cost double what you started with because half burns off,"This is responsible for a big part of the costs.

Then there are two major processing steps. The first is called oxidization stabilization. Here the fibers are fed through very long ovens with temperatures of several hundred degrees. The process takes hours to complete and is therefore a massive energy eater.

The second step is carbonization where the material is again placed in an oven, but this time the temperatures rise over thousand degrees. This step will also increase the power bill. It doesn’t end there.

Manufactures also have to take care of the off-gases to make sure they do not poison the environment, which needs lot’s of energy, real estate and large equipment. All steps are just for the manufacturing of the individual filaments themselves.

To get to the final product, the fibers and the resin have to be shaped and cured in an autoclave, again a time and energy consuming process.

So,the process of manufacturing is time taking and energy eating also only half of the raw material is used in final product.This leads to the high cost of carbon fibre.