Research advances and hotspot evolution of carbon fiber composite material recycling based on bibliometrics analysis

Abstract The rapid application and development of high-performance carbon fiber composite material brought challenges for the recovery of composite waste. Recycling of carbon fiber composites has been particularly demanded. The bibliometric method combined with S-shaped curves and visualization tools VOSviewer and CiteSpace were applied to quantitatively analyze 5979 research papers related to carbon fiber recycling in the Web of Science database from 2000 to 2023. The bibliometric results show that the number of research papers related to carbon fiber recycling has increased from 23 in 2000 to 1247 in 2023. The S-shaped curve of post volume indicates that carbon fiber recovery has great potential for development in the next 20 years. In the global research on carbon fiber recycling technology, China ranks first in terms of publication volume, and the United States ranks second. Both are core countries in the international cooperation network. The evolution of keywords and hotspots indicates that the hotspots in the field of carbon fiber recycling are gradually moving towards “sustainable”, and “circular economy”. Based on patent analysis, the field of carbon fiber recycling is currently experiencing accelerated growth and will become a hot research topic in the future. There are various recycling technologies for carbon fiber composite materials, with pyrolysis as the mainstream. Mechanical recycling causes significant performance loss, while chemical methods are limited by cost. In the future, recycling technologies will focus on improving fiber performance and reducing environmental impact. Graphical Abstract