The WindEurope 2020 report estimates around 14,000 blades could be decommissioned by 2023 in EU alone, which amounts to roughly 40k-60k Tonnes of composite waste which needs to be recycled, an environmental challenge of mammoth proportions !
Souvik Chakraborty, our next pathbreaker, Engineer at the Dept of Sustainability Technologies (ECO) in the Institute of Lightweight Concepts of the German Aerospace Center (DLR), focuses on reducing composite waste by preparing them for reuse.
Souvik talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about the lack of industrial maturity on how to handle such waste coming out of their service life, and its significance towards building a greener planet !
For students, your work in addressing sustainability challenges might just be a drop in an ocean, but what matters is the difference you make through your work.
Souvik, tell us what were your initial years like?
I grew up in a joint family based in a small village close to the West Bengal – Jharkhand border called Neamatpur. My schooling was in an all-boys Christian missionary school called St. Patrick’s H.S. School in Asansol – the city nearest to our village. From the age of 10, Asansol would become our home as we moved into the company accommodation of the Eastern Coalfields Ltd. where my father worked as a technical instructor. Academically, I was not bad as a student and was mostly ranked within the top 10% of my class (never understood the craze to be in the top 3 ranks). Cricket was always my sport – an opening bowler for my class and local team, and higher order batsman. Besides cricket, football was the summer (and monsoon) game with badminton sometimes being the excuse for staying out late on field in the chilly winter evenings of the coal belt region of Bengal.
Machines and buttons have always fascinated me. Maybe this is the reason my ambition (ever since I can recall) was either to be an engineer or a bus driver. But, my interest in Mathematics and Physics throughout my school, especially during the final years (Classes IX-XII) drove me toward engineering However, my parents (given their educational background) weren’t well versed about national level universities (National Institutes of Technology [NITs], Indian Institute of Technology [IITs], etc) and this is where our friends group in school helped immensely. We were a group of 7-8 boys who shared info about national universities, what entrance exams to sit for (besides the state level engineering entrance exam) and how to prepare for them and possibly succeed. Herein, my parents backed my decision to the best of their capabilities. In 2005, my school life came to an end with the ISC exams with 2 objectives – get into a NIT (realistically) and finish the Harry Potter books as quickly as I could get my hands on one.
What did you do for graduation/post graduation?
I did my bachelors (BTech) from the Dept of Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICE) of NIT Jalandhar (2005-2009) and my Masters (MTech) from the Dept. of Physics of NIT Durgapur (Dgp) (2010-2012) in Advanced Materials Science and Technology with a focus on nanocomposites.
I then did my PhD between NIT Durgapur (Dgp) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technologies (Empa), Dübendorf, Switzerland on understanding the fracture mechanisms in epoxy nanocomposites.
Can you talk about some influences that led you to such an offbeat, unconventional and unusual career?
Machines always appealed to me – from a very young age. I used to help my uncle and my dad in fixing their scooters, wire motors of ceiling fans, even building a miniature transformer (with the help of dad’s colleagues in their workshop) for my school physics project. Mechanical Engineering was the first choice for my bachelors. Given my results were not that good in the erstwhile AIEEE exam, in consultation with a teacher of mine, the next best choice was Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICE) at NIT Jalandhar – a compromise between electrical engineering and process control. During BTech, I learnt about sensors and the roles that they play in industrial process control. What fascinated me was the extent of materials science involved in developing a particular sensor based on its inherent properties. In hindsight, maybe this was what led me down the path of materials science/engineering and the desire to know why some materials behave the way they do. But to put a break on that thought for the time being, when we were about to graduate in 2009, the objective was to get a job and earn money by joining an IT company given the industry’s boom in India. The idea was to be set for 2 years before trying for a master’s degree.
But we were the batch of 2009, which graduated just after the economic recession of 2008. During our campus recruitment round, I had been recruited by Satyam, which was wiped out in the recession (later to be acquired by Tech Mahindra). So, before I could join my 1st job, I metaphorically lost my job. The plan to do a masters was preponed. Being a 7 pointer who enjoyed hostel life (naivety with borderline cockiness due to which NIT students don’t get a job) way too much, I failed in my first GATE (exam to qualify for a MTech course with MHRD scholarship) attempt. After a painful 9 months of preparation (the worst 3 months spent in a Delhi GATE prep center), I took the exam again and qualified (not to my satisfaction) and got a place in the Dept. of Physics of NIT Durgapur. After that difficult time, I made a promise to myself – I will work so hard in every aspect that I never have to stay unemployed or have to face a time like those 9 months. I slogged really hard during my master’s with the objective of either getting an industrial placement (preferred) or a PhD position in Europe at the end of the degree.
As part of my master’s thesis, I managed to secure a 3-month internship at Imec, Belgium (one of the largest semiconductor research institutes [RI] there is). Honestly, my thesis advisor was the one who pointed out the possibility of an internship abroad (which increases a chance to get a PhD position in Europe) and that led me to scour the recruitment pages of universities and RIs for hours.
At Imec, I was a masters’ intern. The objective of my internship was to refine the graphene (sheets of hexagonally arranged carbon atoms) growth process at Imec to increase the areal coverage of monolayer graphene. My main work was to modify the process parameters and carry out tests /analyses to investigate the areal coverage. I was successful (with the help/support of my colleagues and seniors group members) to achieve some promising early results and based on this I was offered the chance to do a PhD. The topic (if I can remember now) was broadly on developing graphene-based semiconductor devices.
To cut a long story short, I was offered PhD position in Imec (based on my internship) and in IISc Bangalore, but again (naivety with borderline cockiness), I wanted to get some industry experience before starting my PhD. So, in 2012, when we were in the final weeks of our master’s, a small Pondicherry based ferro-alloys company came to NIT Durgapur for recruitment for their newly opened R&D unit located in an industrial town on the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border for which me and a batchmate of mine (she was then my girlfriend and now my wife) got selected. We were both really happy – life seemed set with both of us
How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Tell us about your career path
Though the job at the ferro-alloy company started ‘ok’, we were not satisfied – neither with the salary nor the work timings (6 days a week). Also, settling down in Tamil Nadu took some getting used to. With time, the work environment really got difficult – toxic work environment, petty politics, egotistical boss, micro-management of every move as well encroaching into our personal lives. We (me and my girlfriend) were always talking and analyzing the office quibbles which was exhausting. So, we decided (between the 2 of us) that we should pursue our PhD dreams and not put-up with this nonsense anymore even if that meant we live separately for a while.
After 1 year in of working, my girlfriend left for her PhD to Germany and 6 months later I left for my PhD which was an Indo-Swiss project between NIT Durgapur and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technologies (Empa), Dübendorf, Switzerland on understanding the fracture mechanisms in epoxy nanocomposites.
To put it in context, epoxy is a polymer material which is used to build aircraft structures, wind turbine blades, high performance auto parts etc. My PhD was a 3-year project out of which 2 years was planned in NIT (nanomaterial processing, analysis and thesis writing) and 2 stints of 6 months each was to be spent at Empa (epoxy nano-composite processing, testing analysis etc). One of the most important life lessons that I learnt during my doctoral thesis was that if done properly, a PhD not only gives you a degree but also helps build your character (a message I told my PhD student too when I had one later in my research career).
The Empa PhD program I was involved in, was more academic in nature – given the extensive industrial projects that Empa runs. Our objective was to try to understand the impact that the affinity/compatibility (interfacial interactions) between the polymer matrix and fillers (nanoparticles in my case) has on fracture toughness. This is an important parameter that helps understand how a polymer behaves when it encounters a sudden crack in it. In real life, a crack can happen in any material (polymer, metal etc) that undergoes extensive usage (under load) and/or impact with objects (stones, birds etc). This can be an important factor when deciding the end use of a material. As a simple example, a polymeric material which has poor fracture properties (a crack can pass easily resulting in the material to break at low loads) cannot be used in high impact applications, like in aircraft parts (fuselage, wings etc) which undergo huge stresses during their service life. Our work was an effort to understand how the fracture properties evolve with additives in order to find new application domains. When we talk of composites, we mainly talk about polymers which encapsulate carbon, glass or sometimes steel fibers as reinforcements. For ease of understanding, it can be considered as a hybrid material.
During my thesis, I got to work with and learn from not only some of the most knowledgeable people of our field who were unimaginably humble but also dealt with people who projected their arrogance and position of power as a cover for their lack of knowledge. One of the best compliments I got during my PhD was when the head of our Dept in Empa said that I was one of the best guest PhDs to work at Empa in the past decade. It was at Empa that my thesis advisor enlightened me on the following 2 things which has been my mantra:
§1 – Importance of building a strong and well spread out professional network
§2 – Since we are assessed by our publications – publishing in a journal which would provide a greater outreach and criticism of the research rather than going for high impact factor one.
How did you get your first break?
It was through relentless applications all over Europe. I got my first break (Nov 2017) as a professional in the field of composites when I got a job at the Irish Composites Center (IComp) which was housed in the University of Limerick, Ireland. I worked on an industrial project that IComp was running with a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) in Ireland which was an automotive parts supplier. We were to develop an acoustically damped composite floor bed for commercial vehicles.
Conventionally, the floor beds of commercial automotives (e.g. trucks, vans, buses, etc.) are made with plywood which is close to an inch in thickness. Added to this, plywood is heavy and with usage, undergoes failure. Our objective was to find a polymer composite based solution to replace these plywood-based structures which would be thinner, lighter, have higher load bearing characteristics and provide better sound proofing from the noise outside (tire against road, engine noise etc).
We had great success in the project and part of it was due to the amazing group of people in the project. This was a 1 year feasibility project within which we developed a prototype product that was eventually patented in Europe. Besides, this being my first major professional achievement, I worked for one of the best bosses I have ever had. My boss (who is now a close friend and collaborator) was an amazingly supportive and understanding person one could ever ask to work for. Also, an amazing polymer chemist, he supported us with his knowledge when I left IComp in Apr 2019 to form my own research group in TU Clausthal located in the Harz Mountains of Central Germany. Another person who was instrumental in expediting my move to Germany was the Director of IComp (it’s my honor to call him my friend now) on whose shoulder a lot of the innovations of the composite industry stands – the chemical formulation of plastic bottles, high performance thermoplastics that are often used in the aerospace sector – just to name a few.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
Challenge 1: Finding your own way: It is really important to find your own way of working, in order to succeed. One cannot be successful by imitating someone else. It takes a few uncomfortable conversations, a few strong logically grounded fact-based debates before one gets there – it was no different for me too. Once you lay the facts down, people will understand – some, if not everybody. I had to face it when we were trying to understand some of the analysis data at IComp – an experienced researcher had a differing opinion, but once we went over the material behavior together, it had to be accepted.
Challenge 2: Protect your people: Even in academia, there is a lot of competition and self-serving motives (as is in any other industrial domain). When I started my own research group in TU Clausthal, I made sure that every member in my group felt safe and secure enough to say if something was wrong/inaccurate and also present and try out new ideas. I learnt this from my boss at IComp who always said – ‘take care of the work and the rest I will handle it. If there is anything you need to discuss, my door is always open’. I made sure that all my group members were not skeptical or afraid to try new things and of failure. This is the only way to learn something new.
Challenge 3: Not to be arrogant and clouded by one’s position, but to be empathetic and ask for help: It was a few talks/interviews of Simon Sinek which helped me put these thoughts into words. It costs us nothing to be a bit more understanding. We build stronger relationships by asking for help. Again, to borrow from Simon – we cannot achieve greatness alone, but together we have the potential to do something great. I have had to leave jobs (industry and academia) with a bitter taste because people I worked for lacked empathy. One of my closest collaborators (besides my ex-boss) is an Assistant Prof. from TU Delft who I had approached asking for his help to understand the polymer flow phenomenon. We ended up talking about football (he being Brazilian and me a Brazil fan), Harry Potter books to research ideas that we could jointly submit for funding. If we are honest and remember the difficulties we faced to arrive at where we are, empathy and humility will become part of our character.
Where do you work now? What problems do you solve?
Currently, I work as an Engineer for Sustainable Technologies in the Dept of Sustainability Technologies (ECO) in the Institute of Lightweight Concepts of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Brausnchweig.
In ECO, we are striving to develop processes and technologies targeted towards recycling of composite waste and to build a more sustainable composite world. The focus is on reducing the composite waste by preparing them for reuse.
We are primarily looking at waste from engineering applications – coming from wind energy, aerospace and the automotive sector. To give a quick example – the 2020 WindEurope report predicted that 14,000 wind turbine blades would be decommissioned in EU alone which amounts to roughly 40k-60k Tonnes of composite waste which needs to be recycled. To put it bluntly, we are in no short of waste to work with, but we are racing against time to develop industrially matured technology/process to recycle the waste to lower our carbon footprint.
Since sustainability and recycling of composites is a relatively new field (across academia and industry), it lacks a dedicated text book so as to say and is heavily interdisciplinary. It draws upon knowledge of chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, mechanical engineering, statistics and physics to name a few. There are definitely a few I would have missed here. Honestly, it’s not possible for any individual to acquire or know every aspect required to develop a recycling process. We work mostly as a team where we draw on the experience and knowledge of one another (asking for help). Someone amongst us leads a particular team dedicated to tackling a bigger problem and the rest of the team supports to find a successful solution. We also have to read a lot of research papers as well as regulatory guidelines as is issued at the Federal and European level.
What’s a typical day like?
DLR being in a research organization, it’s very difficult to describe a day, as one day varies significantly from the other since our work is extremely dynamic. Also, we have a very flexible working culture here. Some days we have meetings all day long, and then there will be test days that can run non-stop from morning till end of the day.
How does your work benefit society?
Even though lightweight composites are being increasingly incorporated into every aspect of our life – automotive, aerospace, wind energy, locomotive – you name it, there still lacks an industrial maturity on how to handle such waste coming out of their service life. Hopefully, our work will provide a road map and an industrial scale technology on how to handle such composite waste. This may possibly be just a drop in the ocean in our contribution towards the global effort in building a sustainable society and a greener planet.
Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!
In my previous job at TU Clausthal, within a PhD project, we developed a recycling process for a commercial resin system that leads to minimal downgrading of the recovered components. This has been a memorable achievement for us as this was an unique demonstration of room temp based recycling strategies.
Your advice to students based on your experience?
Hard work and honesty have no substitute. Be fearless, believe in your abilities and be empathetic. Humility will open up a million doors, arrogance will shut even more.
Future Plans?
Keep working towards developing new processes for a diverse range of composite waste and maybe will see them actually make a difference. Let’s see if our work can actually make a difference on the global scheme of things.