EVERETT — Industry boosters here learned this month that Paine Field won’t be the home of a new federally supported research center devising new and cheaper ways to make and use carbon-fiber-composite materials in manufacturing.
The state is still a leader in using carbon-composites, but expanding research here is important to remaining ahead in a rapidly evolving field, they say.
Composite materials have long been used in aerospace, where they offer lighter, stronger and non-corrosive alternatives to metal. Carbon-fiber material is also widely used in the wind-power industry.
Global demand for composites is expected to significantly grow in coming years. Automakers, for example, are using them to make lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Last year, one of the world’s biggest producers of composite materials, SGL, and BMW Group broke ground on a new facility in Moses Lake for making carbon-fiber composites for the car maker’s i-series of electric and hybrid cars.
Down in Sumner, Toray Composites makes material that goes into Boeing airplanes. In Burlington and Kent, Hexcel Corp. makes components of composites for aerospace manufacturers. In the past year, both companies announced plans to expand their work here in response to work for Boeing.
“We already are a leader,” said Alex Pietsch, the governor’s top aerospace policy advisor.
He was part of the state-led effort to get a federal grant worth $70 million for a research center.
The state Department of Commerce was the lead applicant; partners included companies, universities and public agencies in Washington, California, Alaska and Kansas.
Much of the money would have gone to set up a research facility at Paine Field.
But earlier this month, President Barack Obama went to Knoxville, Tennessee, to announce that the federal Department of Energy had chosen a group led by the University of Tennessee for the grant.
It is the fifth of eight federal grants to establish hubs meant to get researchers, businesses and the governments working together on improvements that will benefit U.S. manufacturing. The grant that Tennessee won is focused on clean energy and fuel-efficient vehicles.
“We always knew it would be kind of a stretch for us,” Pietsch said. “We were trying to make our aerospace assets fit into a different-shaped hole.”
But losing out to Tennessee isn’t the end of the world.
Pietsch and other industry insiders are looking for other opportunities to expand composite-material research here.
Expensive, young material
Humans have been working with metals since the Bronze Age, but composites are only a few decades old.
For all their upside, composites are expensive to make, said John Byrne, vice president of airplane materials and structures for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “There is lot of cost to develop, certify and qualify new materials.”
Production isn’t cheap, either.
While metal alloys start with ore mined from the earth, composite materials start with chemical concoctions called precursors, the formulas of which are proprietary information owned by the companies that developed them.
Chemical precursors are used in spinning fiber with plastics, a process that results in material that is lighter and stronger than metal and doesn’t corrode.
Each composites producer makes its own varieties that are essentially unique. There are no industry standards for composites, the way there are for metals. So manufacturers using composites can’t get multiple suppliers to provide an identical material.
Being able to do that would be “kind of nirvana from a procurement standpoint,” Byrne said.
It would also drive competition between providers, which would likely drive down costs.
Composites hard to recycle
Once a producer comes up with a new type of composite material, it has to shell out a lot of money to make it, Byrne said.
With metal, a producer can largely use existing mills and foundries to make a new alloy. “Whereas on composite materials, you’ve basically had to develop new factories every time you develop new material,” Byrne said.
“Like anything else, it gets down to simple economics. If you can’t get volume, the cost stays high,” he said.
After a manufacturer such as Boeing makes something out of composite material, the scraps can’t be easily recycled for other uses.
The Port of Port Angeles is trying to change that by starting a research center focused on recycling composites.
It was part of the state’s grant application, but last year the port decided to proceed with the center regardless of the grant outcome.
Working with the city of Port Angeles, Klallam County and Peninsula College, the port is trying to get $3.5 million to launch the center, said Jennifer States, the port’s business development director.
The center, which could open as soon as this fall, will let researchers and companies find new ways to turn composite material scraps into new products, she said.
“Essentially, this is brand new concept that hasn’t been done in the U.S. and, as far as we know, in the world,” States said.
Across Puget Sound, the University of Washington and Boeing just opened a small research lab that will focus on advanced materials in aerospace.
Expanding the workforce
A consortium of community and technical colleges called Composites Washington has helped expand workforce training in the state to ensure there are enough qualified workers for companies such as Boeing, which plans to make the 777X’s huge wings from carbon-fiber composite material in Everett.
Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposed budget for 2015-17 has money to accommodate more students.
While interest in an additional public-private research center like the one proposed for Everett is high, state and local government budgets are under pressure, said Mary Kaye Bredeson, head of Composites Washington and the Center of Excellence for Aerospace and Advanced Materials Manufacturing in Everett.
“There’s some understandable hesitation. I don’t think anyone wants to say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ll build this, and find the money somewhere,’ ” she said. “We were all really, really hoping that we would get that federal money.”
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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