(Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
Carbon fiber is a strong, stiff, lightweight enabling material for improved performance in many applications. Historically carbon fiber has been a high-priced specialty material prohibiting its widespread use in high volume, cost sensitive applications. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has successfully addressed this issue with the development of a novel fiber production method that reduces the carbon fiber cost by approximately 50% while also reducing the energy required for its production by a similar amount. LCCF technology is the first to meet the cost and performance requirements for main stream domestic automotive and other high volume cost sensitive applications.